sign in sign up
<<
Home , Arts in Australia, Australian art, Aylmer Bourke Lambert, Butterfly perch, Colony of Tasmania, Edward Duyker

Nineteenth century and belonging in

Volume One

by

Anita Hansen

Master of Fine Art– Graduate Diploma of Art–University of Newcastle Bachelor of Fine Art–University of Tasmania

Submitted in the fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Tasmania April 2013

i

Signed statement of originality

This thesis contains no material which has been accepted for a degree or diploma by the University or any other institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, it incorporates no material previously published or written by another person, except where due acknowledgement is made in the text.

Anita Hansen

ii

Signed statement of authority of access to copying

This thesis may be available for loan and limited copying and communication in accordance with the Copyright Act 1968.

Anita Hansen

iii

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this thesis is to advance knowledge of the significance of nineteenth century natural history art in the ‘sense of belonging’, the ‘sense of place’, in Tasmania. Roslynn Haynes notes, ‘The notion of a ‘sense of place’ has become increasingly important in recent times, and nowhere more acutely than in Tasmania’.1 Haynes, like many other writers, looks to to interpret this ‘sense of place’. In this thesis I present a parallel narrative using a much under-analysed form of art practice, that is, natural history art and I will demonstrate that natural history art is of profound importance in imaging a ‘sense of place’ and the transition from British to independent state.

As members of a colony shift their perception of themselves as being at the periphery of an empire, and begin to imagine themselves at the centre of their own unique society, they begin to create their own history as they become a settler society. It is in the content of their cultural institutions—the museums, art galleries and libraries—that we can see what is deemed to be of significance to that ‘sense of place’. Tasmania’s cultural institutions contain extensive collections of natural history art; collections that are even now being added to and that help document this connection to place.

In this thesis I examine the works of six natural history artists and two landscape artists, to illustrate how a post-colonial interpretation changes the context of their art practice through time, and how that can be seen to be analogous to changes in ‘sense of belonging’ to place—from European discovery, colonisation, to independent society. The protagonists are the explorers Charles-Alexandre Lesueur and , the artist , early settlers Mary Morton Allport and Louisa Anne Meredith, the Tasmanian-born William Archer, and the landscape artists John Glover and William Charles Piguenit.

1 Roslynn Haynes, Tasmanian Visions: in Writing, Art and Photography (Sandy Bay, Tas: Polymath Press, 2006), p.xi. iv

I also look at the role of natural history art in the collections of cultural institutions of two other lands, Canada and New Caledonia, to examine the role of natural history art in the collections of their cultural institutions.

Conclusion

As a colony moves from being at the periphery of an imperial power towards independence, it needs to construct its own separate history and identity. What is collected in the cultural institutions of that colony indicates what is deemed significant by the members of that settler society. The transference of allegiance can be linked to the transference of material artefacts and natural history art figures strongly in this. In Tasmania, natural history art has an important role in identifying place, which I believe fulfils a role not seen in New Caledonia or Canada. The artists and the art works I have selected demonstrate the change of perception of Tasmania from space to place, as settlers formed a sense of belonging to their new home.

The cultural institutions of Tasmania continue to add to their nineteenth century natural history illustrations. The continued acquisition of these artefacts—in the form of original illustrations, as singular prints, and as monographs—is evidence of the hold that these images have in the imagination of Tasmanians. While, as Dr Haynes argues, the inhabitants of the society see the representation of the landscape as an important signifier of ‘the sense of place’ that is felt by members of that community, so natural history illustration also provides an extremely important, but under-researched, form of representation in Tasmania. Natural history illustrations are celebrated not only as representations of the State’s unique flora and fauna, but they also contribute significantly to that community’s powerful ‘sense of belonging’ to place.

v

Acknowledgements

This thesis is dedicated to the memory of my brother Allan Hansen.

I have been fortunate in receiving tremendous support from many, many people and institutions whilst completing this work. I especially wish to thank my supervisor, Professor Jonathan Holmes, University of Tasmania, and co- supervisor Dr Andrew Rozefelds, ex Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, now Museum, for their unfailing support, enthusiasm and constructive criticism. I would also like to thank my Research Supervisor, Dr Stefan Petrow.

I am grateful to the University of Tasmania without whose financial assistance this thesis would not have been possible, a significant part of my funding originated from their Graduate Research Scholarship. I was also awarded three GRSS Grants that contributed in part, toward travel expenses that enabled me to carry out research in New Caledonia, and to present papers at conferences in Palmerston North (), Edinburgh (Scotland) and Savannah (Georgia, USA). I wish also to thank Dr Emily Gilbert, Cultural Studies, University of Toronto, who sponsored my Fellowship there.

I have benefited a great deal from the collections in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, the State Library of Tasmania, the Allport Library and Museum of Fine , the Queen Museum and Art Gallery, the University of Toronto, and the Muséum d’, Le Havre. My thanks go to all these institutions and their friendly and helpful staff, especially Sue Backhouse at TMAG, Tony Marshall and Marian Jameson at the State Library and the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts. I would also like to thank Cédric Crémière and Gabrielle Baglione, of the Muséum d’histoire naturelle, Le Havre, for their assistance and for allowing me to use previously unpublished images of Charles-Alexandre Lesueur’s Mirounga leonina. Thanks also to Miriam Prin and Montaigne Pentecost at the Bernheim Library, Nouméa, who gave me access to the library’s full catalogue. Of course an

vi enormous thankyou is owed to the amazing people at the School of Art Carrington Smith Library; Juliet Beale, Beth Chalmers and Phylis Scott, and Andrew Parsons at the Morris Miller Library (The Royal Society of Tasmania), University of Tasmania.

Many people have discussed aspects of my work with me and offered helpful advice, as well as information on and access to sources. In this respect, it is difficult to make an exhaustive list, but I would like to acknowledge my gratitude all those who were willing to spare some of their valuable time. A special thanks goes to Dr Brita Hansen and Dr Margaret Davies who gave invaluable advice and help in proofing this thesis.

vii

Contents

ABSTRACT ...... IV

Conclusion ...... v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... VI CONTENTS ...... VIII LIST OF FIGURES ...... XI CHAPTER ONE ...... 1

INTRODUCTION ...... 1 Natural history art in the collections today ...... 4 Natural history not National history museums ...... 8 Natural history illustration ...... 10 Museums, libraries and art galleries ...... 17 ...... 21 Belonging and identity ...... 25 The New Caledonia and Canadian case studies ...... 32 Ethnographic illustration ...... 34 CHAPTER TWO — EUROPEANS DISCOVER TASMANIA AND ITS NATURAL HISTORY ...... 38

Before going to the periphery ...... 46 Exploring the periphery ...... 51 Out place, out of context ...... 54 CHAPTER THREE ...... 63

THE EXPLORERS—GOING TO THE PERIPHERY—1800 TO 1802 ...... 63 The Baudin expedition ...... 64 Charles-Alexandre Lesueur ...... 67 Working with François Péron ...... 71 Publishing the scientific results and illustrations ...... 78 The Flinders expedition ...... 80 Ferdinand Bauer ...... 82 Working with Robert Brown ...... 83 Bauer’s art ...... 87 Publishing the scientific results and illustrations ...... 90 The two expeditions ...... 92 CHAPTER FOUR ...... 94

THE CONVICT—ARRIVING AT THE PERIPHERY—1803 TO 1837 ...... 94

viii

William Buelow Gould ...... 97 William Buelow Gould assigned to Dr James Scott and Dr William de Little ...... 101 William Buelow Gould’s natural history illustrations ...... 105 The Museum and Art Gallery collection ...... 108 The Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts ...... 111 Sketchbook of Fishes ...... 112 Natural history illustration and landscape art ...... 115 Still life paintings...... 121 William Buelow Gould’s landscape paintings ...... 123 Scientific interest in Tasmania ...... 126 Military rule and free settlers ...... 127 Review ...... 128 CHAPTER FIVE ...... 129

THE SETTLERS—LIVING AT THE PERIPHERY—1838 TO 1846 ...... 129 Women artists ...... 130 Mary Morton Allport ...... 131 Natural history illustration ...... 133 Landscapes ...... 136 Louisa Anne Meredith ...... 137 Publications in Tasmania ...... 140 Natural history illustrations ...... 144 Landscapes ...... 145 The visit by Elizabeth and ...... 146 Landscape art in Tasmania – John Glover...... 151 Scientific expeditions ...... 153 ...... 157 Review ...... 158 CHAPTER SIX ...... 160

THE TASMANIAN—LIVING IN THE CENTRE—1847 TO 1901 ...... 160 William Archer ...... 162 Growing political tensions ...... 165 ...... 166 William Archer’s illustrations—in place, in context ...... 168 The orchid illustrations ...... 170 William Charles Piguenit ...... 176 Piguenit’s landscapes ...... 178 Looking at the heart ...... 179

ix

Being Tasmanian ...... 182 Review ...... 185 CHAPTER SEVEN ...... 187

CANADIAN AND NEW CALEDONIAN CASE STUDIES ...... 187 Canada—European exploration and settlement—a short history ...... 188 Natural history – Canada ...... 190 The natural history art of Canadian fauna and flora ...... 194 Landscape art and identity in Canada ...... 201 The Group of Seven ...... 203 New Caledonia—European exploration and settlement—a short history ...... 206 Natural history—New Caledonia ...... 209 Natural history illustration ...... 211 Natural history art collections in New Caledonia ...... 215 National identity and belonging ...... 218 Review ...... 221 CONCLUSION ...... 222

BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 225

x

List of Figures

Figure 1: Illustrations from TAL&Dai-ichi collection...... 4 Figure 2: George Raper...... 6 Figure 3: Palaeolithic cave drawing from , France...... 10 Figure 4:Enchillis obcordata (now Pultenaea obcordata) by William Buelow Gould...... 12 Figure 5:Pencil drawings of freshwater crayfish chela by Brita Hansen. Watercolour and gauche wasp drawing by Anita Hansen...... 12 Figure 6: Parkinson, Two of the natives of , advancing to combat...... 36 Figure 7: Kangaroo by George Stubbs and after Stubbs...... 40 Figure 8: Rhinoceros, ...... 46 Figure 9: Whale with calf...... 46 Figure 10: Grey Goshawk (Accipiter novae hollandiae) by Georg Forster...... 52 Figure 11: obliqua L’Hér...... 54 Figure 12: JP Redouté illustration from English version of Labillardiére's book...... 59 Figure 13: Black Swan by Piron...... 60 Figure 14: Tasmanian parrot by Audebert...... 60 Figure 15: Correa reflexa (Mazeutoxeron reflexum). Pierre-Joseph Redouté...... 61 Figure 16: Eucalyptus obliqua...... 62 Figure 17: The Poorly Defended Rose, M. Garnier, and Havershaw or Warren Landing, J. Milbert...... 65 Figure 18: Lesueur illustrations in Baudin's journal...... 68 Figure 19: Unidentified mollusc by Lesueur...... 69 Figure 20: Jellyfish by Lesueur...... 69 Figure 21: Illustration showing detailed morphology...... 69 Figure 22: Sketches made at ...... 70 Figure 23: Detail of emu feather...... 72 Figure 24: Example of ‘jizz’ sketches by Lesueur...... 73 Figure 25: Thylacine...... 74 Figure 26: Sea Lion and Lioness of Knapton...... 75 Figure 27: The Sea Lion of Pernetty...... 75 Figure 28: Mirounga leonina...... 76 Figure 29: New Holland Honeyeater (Phylidonyris novaehollandiae)...... 77 Figure 30: Silene coronaria from Flora Graeca by Ferdinand Bauer...... 82

xi

Figure 31: Ellis aquatic microscope c. 1775...... 83 Figure 32: Bauer's colour chart...... 87 Figure 33: Parkinson's method of rough sketch, Bauer's numbering method...... 87 Figure 34: by Ferdinand Bauer...... 88 Figure 35: Corybus unguiculatus A and B...... 88 Figure 36: Grevillea banksii from Illustrationes florae Novae Hollandiae...... 90 Figure 37: Etchings and lithographs...... 93 Figure 38: William Buelow Gould, by (1890–1855)...... 97 Figure 39: Spode china c. 1820...... 99 Figure 40: Spode pattern book...... 99 Figure 41: Illustration by Gould claimed by Scott...... 102 Figure 42: Comparison of illustration for James Scott and William de Little...... 106 Figure 43: Blue Flowers, William Buelow Gould...... 106 Figure 44: Correa reflexa by Gould...... 107 Figure 45: Detail from Correa reflexa...... 107 Figure 46: Botanical illustration, Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery...... 108 Figure 47: Pink tall plant, Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts...... 110 Figure 48: Melaleuca squamata 1831...... 112 Figure 49: Kennedia prostrata 1827–3? ...... 112 Figure 50: Astacopsis gouldi (top), Astacopsis tricornis (bottom)...... 113 Figure 51: Freshwater crayfish...... 113 Figure 52: Flounder by WB Gould...... 114 Figure 53: Sarah Island, (1833), William Buelow Gould...... 116 Figure 54: Hooker and company journeying through the wilderness from Plymouth to Hartford, 1636. (1846), Frederick Edwin Church...... 117 Figure 55: Still life by Gould...... 121 Figure 56: Birds, William Buelow Gould...... 121 Figure 57: Spode pottery plate...... 121 Figure 58: Game–Still life with birds, William Buelow Gould...... 121 Figure 59: Fish on a Blue and White Plate, William Buelow Gould...... 122 Figure 60: Still life with Game and Fish, William Buelow Gould...... 122 Figure 61: Imaginary River Scene, William Buelow Gould...... 123 Figure 62: The Oxbow, Thomas Cole...... 124 Figure 63: Mary Morton Allport and her children...... 131 Figure 64: Christ Church at West Bromwich...... 132 Figure 65: Brunonia australis...... 133 Figure 66: Insects...... 133

xii

Figure 67: Telopea truncata from the mountain pass above Barrett's Mill...... 134 Figure 68: Sandy Bay...... 136 Figure 69: Family landscapes...... 137 Figure 70: Louisa Anne Meredith...... 137 Figure 71: Anemone and lily of the valley, Louisa Anne Meredith...... 138 Figure 72: Bush friends in Tasmania, Louisa Anne Meredith...... 140 Figure 73: Tasmanian Tiger and by Louisa Anne Meredith...... 142 Figure 74: Platypus and Tasmanian Tiger by H. C. Richter for Gould...... 142 Figure 75: Flowers by Louisa Anne Meredith...... 143 Figure 76: Fish illustrations by Louisa Anne Meredith...... 144 Figure 77: Spring Vale, Louisa Anne Meredith...... 145 Figure 78: Euphema splendida, John Gould...... 148 Figure 79: Elizabeth Gould...... 148 Figure 80: Black-headed Honey-eater, Elizabeth Gould, and Crescent Honey-eater by Richter...... 149 Figure 81: Crescent Honey-eater (Phylidonyris pyrrheptera)...... 149 Figure 82: Black-headed Honey-eater by Richter...... 150 Figure 83: Acanthizae ewingii: Gould, (Tasmanian Thornbill), J. Gould and HCRichter...... 150 Figure 84: Southern hairy-nosed wombat, J Wolf for J Gould...... 150 Figure 85: Portrait of John Glover, Mary Morton Allport ca 1832...... 151 Figure 86: Patterdale Van Diemen’s Land, John Glover...... 152 Figure 87: My Harvest Home, John Glover...... 153 Figure 88: Adelie penguins...... 154 Figure 89: Durville crab by Borromée...... 155 Figure 90: Kangurroode la Nouvelle Hollande, by Oudart...... 155 Figure 91: Dianella tasmanica from Flora Tasmaniae...... 155 Figure 92: William Archer...... 162 Figure 93: Prasophylum archeri (now Corunastylis archeri)...... 169 Figure 94: Caladenia filamentosa by Archer (top)...... 170 Figure 95: Detail of Spiranthus australis...... 173 Figure 96: Botanical microscope c.1840...... 173 Figure 97: Thelymitra antennifera, (top) Linnean Society and (bottom) Flora Tasmaniae...... 174 Figure 98: TMAG pencil sketch and Flora Tasmaniae...... 175 Figure 99: William Charles Piguenit...... 176 Figure 100: Permian Fossils...... 177

xiii

Figure 101: Mt Olympus...... 178 Figure 102: The Frenchman's Cap from the western flank of Mount Arrowsmith. WC Piguenit...... 179 Figure 103: The Oregon Trail, Albert Bierstadt 1869...... 180 Figure 104: Unicorn in Codex canadiensis...... 191 Figure 105: Codex canadiensis...... 192 Figure 106: The Great Speckled Loon from New Foundland, Eleazer Albin...... 194 Figure 107: Canadian birds, JJ Audubon...... 196 Figure 108: Audubon sketch of Audubon's shearwater 1826...... 196 Figure 109: Indian cup, Sarracenia purpurea, by Maria Morris...... 198 Figure 110: Illustrations by Maria Morris...... 199 Figure 111: Canadian Wildflowers, Agnes Chamberlin...... 200 Figure 112: Aster lindleyanis (top), Amanita, Boletus, Stropharia semiglobata (bottom)...... 200 Figure 113: View of the Fall of Montgomery and the Attack made by General Wolfe on the French Entrenchments near Beaufort...... 201 Figure 114: Landscape with a double spruce, Albrecht Altdorfer...... 204 Figure 115: Landscape Altdorfer (top), Thompson (bottom)...... 206 Figure 116: Rivière Bleue Park on the Mainland...... 210 Figure 118: Passiflora aurantia, Georg Forster...... 211 Figure 117: New Caledonian Night Heron, Georg Forster...... 211 Figure 119: Pie de la Nouvell Caledonie...... 212 Figure 120: Antholoma montana by Pierre-Joseph Redouté...... 212 Figure 122: Little Pied Cormorant, John Gould...... 213 Figure 121: Hachettea austro-calednia, Auguste Faguet...... 213 Figure 123: Moorak, Kingdom Illustrated...... 214 Figure 124: Cagou...... 214 Figure 125: The Tjibaou Cultural Centre...... 218

xiv

Please note: Van Diemen’s Land was renamed Tasmania in 1853. Although I acknowledge the term Van Diemen’s Land should properly be used until 1853, to avoid confusion I have used the name Tasmania throughout in this thesis except when quoting from a text where Van Diemen’s Land is used.

I have endeavoured where possible to use the current scientific name of plants and .

Throughout this thesis I have written The Royal Society of Tasmania, with the uppercase T, which, although appearing odd, is the correct title of the Society.

xv

Chapter One Introduction

One of the fascinating aspects in the growth of the collection is what it implies about the transference of loyalty and identity from English provincial origins to a similar but distinctly Tasmanian base. The Pictorial Collection of the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Art.1

Our collections represent the essence of our society's values and are a major reference point for Tasmanians to gain a greater appreciation of what it means to be Tasmanian and to understand our place within the global community. Collection: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.2

Art has an important place in a society’s perception of self, of identity, of its sense of belonging. That the quotes above come from publications of two of Tasmania’s major public cultural institutions, the State Library of Tasmania and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, is a powerful indication that the forming and construction of identity and belonging is, in part, a function of the state. It also goes to demonstrate the fundamental role museums, libraries and art galleries play in that construct.

This thesis is about belonging to place; about settler society identity in a postcolonial era; and about the complex role art—and for this thesis natural history art—plays in that sense of belonging. Much has been written about the function wilderness and landscape art has in forming Australian identity, however the purpose of this thesis is to advance knowledge of the significance of nineteenth century natural history art in the sense of belonging, the sense of place, in Tasmania. Roslynn Haynes notes, ‘The notion of a ‘sense of place’

1 Elizabeth Imashev, "The Pictorial Collection of the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts," Tasmanian Insights: Essays in Honour of Geoffrey Thomas Stilwell, ed. Gillian Winter (: State Library of Tasmania, 1992), p.82. 2 Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Collection: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, ed. Caroline Mordaunt (Hobart: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 2007), p.vii. 1 has become increasingly important in recent times, and nowhere more acutely than in Tasmania’.3 Haynes, like many other writers, looks to landscape to interpret this sense of place. In this thesis, I present a parallel narrative using a much under-analysed form of art practice, that is, natural history art and I will demonstrate that natural history art is of profound importance in imaging a sense of place and the transition from British colony to independent state.

The focus of this thesis is on non-indigenous4 belonging to place. This has become an increasingly problematic and contentious issue in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries as the recognition of indigenous rights grows within the non-indigenous population. This is a population itself trying to come to terms with its own sense of belonging, in what is now for many the only place with which they can, do, or wish, to identify.

This thesis investigates how members of a settler society can search for an understanding of self and belonging through the nineteenth century natural history art held in their major cultural institutions. I will also examine the relationship between natural history art and landscape art of the same era. Landscape art has a powerful connection to the imaging of nation, of national identity, with all its imperial and exclusionary implications. I posit that natural history art engenders a sense of belonging to place rather than evoking a national identity. A more intimate connection to place.

The thesis concentrates particularly on ’s island state Tasmania, and the natural history art held within the ‘Tasmaniana’5 collections of a number of the state’s major cultural institutions: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery,

3 Roslynn Haynes, Tasmanian Visions: Landscapes in Writing, Art and Photography (Sandy Bay, Tas: Polymath Press, 2006), p.xi. 4 The term ‘indigenous’ will be dealt with later in the thesis, when the growing debate on whether the term can be applied to non-aboriginal members of a settler society is discussed in detail. 5 ‘ana’ a noun suffix denoting a collection of material pertaining to a given subject, as in Shakespeariana, [or in this case Tasmaniana], A (editor-in-chief) Delbridge, The Macquarie Dictionary: Second Revision, ed. A Delbridge (Sydney: University of New South , 1982), p.101. 2

State Library of Tasmania, Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery and The Royal Society of Tasmania’s library. I examine the histories of six natural history illustrators to tell the story of the links between natural history art and a sense of belonging. The artists are Ferdinand Bauer (1760–1826), Charles- Alexandre Lesueur (1778–1857), William Buelow Gould (1801–1853), Mary Morton Allport (1806–1895), Louisa Anne Meredith (1812–1895), and William Archer (1820–1874). In exploring the histories of these artists and their art practice, I demonstrate how members of a colony move from perceiving themselves at the periphery of an imperial power to being the centre of their own unique society.

The evolution of those changing attitudes of belonging from European settlement at the beginning of the nineteenth century through to in Tasmania is traced in this thesis. The study commences in the early nineteenth century when both British and French governments sent scientific expeditions to Tasmania’s shores. In that period, arguably two of the greatest natural history artists of the era—the golden age of scientific illustration—Ferdinand Bauer on the British expedition commanded by and Charles-Alexandre Lesueur on the French expedition commanded by —illustrated the fauna and flora of Tasmania.

Chapter One gives a general introduction to the thesis and a literature review. Chapter Two investigates events and natural history art leading up to the renewed interest in the southern oceans in the beginning of the nineteenth century. Chapter Three deals with natural history art of pre-European settlement Tasmania by examining the work of the artists Ferdinand Bauer and Charles-Alexandre Lesueur. The British claim to Tasmania and subsequent establishment of a at the beginning of the nineteenth century is examined in Chapter Four through the natural history art of the convict artist William Buelow Gould. In Chapter Five, the first free settlers and their reaction to their new home in the antipodes is considered through the work of the women artists Mary Morton Allport and Louisa Anne Meredith, while Chapter Six looks at the natural history art of the first Tasmanian-born artist William Archer. 3

The two case studies of Canada and New Caledonia follow as Chapter Seven. The case studies will examine the collections held in major cultural institutions of New Caledonia and Canada, and the images used by these societies in their sense of self, belonging and identity. Canada and New Caledonia were selected for examination as there are links with Tasmania and natural history art. A number of nineteenth century scientific expeditions sailed to both Tasmania and New Caledonia, therefore the same artists worked on the fauna and flora of both places at about the same time. , and others visited both Tasmania and Canada. Do Canadians and New Caledonians have the same strong connection to their natural history art as Tasmanians and ?

Natural history art in the collections today

Colonial natural history drawings come home.6

‘Colonial natural history drawings come home’, that is the boast of the headline on a recent ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission) news website. The article

relates to the recent purchase by the State Library of of the Earl of Derby collection. Now called the TAL&Dai-ichi (Earl of Derby) collection, it

consists of six albums containing 741 drawings of Figure 1: Illustrations from natural history art (Figure 1), compiled by the botanist TAL&Dai-ichi collection. (1761–1842). Aylmer received these works from some of the first visitors to the colony of New South Wales, including Surgeon (1756–1832), Governor (1738–1837), Colonel William Paterson (1755–1810), Major Robert Ross (1740–1794), Philip King (1758–1808), and Major Francis Grose (1758–1814). While the name of the artist[s] responsible for all the illustrations

6 Colonial Natural History Drawings Come Home, ABC News, Available: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-06-07/colonial-natural-history-drawings-come- home/2749216, 7 June 2011. 4 is not known, a number of the ornithological illustrations are known to be by the convict artist (c1762–1806).7

It is the use of the word ‘home’ in the headline that is interesting. Ian McLean made the claim for ‘reappropriating’ such material in Reclaiming Australia: the School and its exile when he wrote, ‘Today are having some success in repatriating their cultural property and, in the process, enriching and strengthening their identity. It is time that Euro- Australians did the same’.8 Strong words indeed! McLean makes the claim that early European settling material should be considered to be Australian historical material, that is, that the work of the Port Jackson School. He says:

despite the historical logic of considering the Port Jackson artists the first school of Euro-, the claim is by no means straightforward ... hence historians of Australian culture have invariably located its origin in the late nineteenth century, a full century after the colony was first established ... as a result one hundred years of Australian art becomes European art made in Australia, rather than Australian art.9

7 Tal&Dai-Ichi Life (Earl of Derby) Collection of Natural History Watercolours, Available: http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/discover_collections/natural_world/derby/index.html, 19 November 2012. 8 Ian McLean, "Reclaiming Australia: The Port Jackson School and Its Exile," Art and Australia 33.1 (1995). 9 Ian McLean, "Reclaiming Australia: The Port Jackson School and Its Exile," Art and Australia 33.1 (1995). See also; Early Birds Which Fly Off the Page, 2011, Sydney Morning Herald, Available: http://smh.com.au/environment/animals/early-birds-which-fly- off-the-page-20110606-1fpdy.html, 19 November 2012, Natural History Treasures Return to Australia, Available: http://www.cfzaustralia.com/2011/11/natural-history-reasures- return-to.htlm, 19 November 2011. 5

The recent purchase of works by artist George Raper (1769–1796) by the National Library of Australia has been described as, ‘fifty-six ... priceless artefacts held by the National Library of Australia (Figure 2). The strong rhetoric shows the importance of the early natural

history art in the minds of Australians, and the cultural institutions of Australia (and Tasmania) today still maintain the acquisition of natural history illustrations as a vital part of our history. Another ABC article notes the recognition of William Buelow Gould’s Sketchbook of Fishes ‘as a document of world significance … the sketchbook was inscribed on the UNESCO Australian Figure 2: George Memory of the World Register. For historic material, it Raper. is the equivalent of World Heritage Listing’.10 No small feat for a tiny book of illustrations by a convict artist. Later in this thesis I will detail the extraordinary search for, and eventual purchase of, Gould’s botanical illustrations by the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Launceston, Tasmania.

Why is it that the collection of the natural history art of early explorers, colonisers, convicts and settlers is so significant to Australians cultural institutions? Ian McLean notes:

Much art historiography self-consciously narrates the nation, with art museums the world over arranging their collections according to such narrations. However, most colonised peoples still find their cultural property in the vaults of European institutions.11

This fascination with fauna and flora began with the early Australian colonialists and was a means with which to identify with the unique

10 Australian Broadcasting Commission, Book Puts Tasmania on World Stage, 2011, Available: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/04/02/3180515.htm?section=entertainment, 4 April 2011. 11 Ian McLean, "Reclaiming Australia: The Port Jackson School and Its Exile," Art and Australia 33.1 (1995). 6 environment of their land, and that this would have a great influence in forming their sense of a separate, independent identity from their British rulers. and Jane Hylton write of the privileging of natural history art over landscapes even in the first days of settlement,

However, it was not the unfamiliar, and to them unremarkable landscape that interested the first convict and non-convict amateur artists of Australia. The over-riding fascination was with the unique flora and fauna and the 'natives'. These images fill sketchbooks and journals for most of the first two decades of settlement. Most such drawings and watercolours were intended to be sent back to a curious Britain; the Government's dispatches often enclosed natural history sketches’.12

It is therefore not anomalous that the natural history art should have such an important role in the collections of the cultural institutions.

These drawings, usually meant to be viewed by scientists, or to be used to illustrate books, are now seen as works of art in their own right. In recent years exhibitions dedicated to natural history art have been shown in major galleries throughout Australia. Since the 1980s, at least twenty exhibitions dedicated to natural history art have been held at the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts held since the 1980s gives an indication of the interest held in these works in Tasmania.13

12 Ron Radford and Jane Hylton, Australian Colonial Art: 1800–1900 (Adelaide: Art Gallery Board of , 1995), p.18. 13 The following exhibitions were all shown at the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts between 1981 and 2011. Mary Morton Allport: a Commemorative Exhibition, December 1981, Florilegium, November 1985, Florilgium and Botanical Books, May–September 1989, Mary Morton Allport, September 1994– March 1995, Curzona Frances Louise Allport, April 1995–May 1996, Colonial Women Artists of Tasmania, December 1995–May 1996, Fearful Symmetry, Natural History Images from the Allport Collections July–November 1996, Voyages, November 1996–March 1997, The French Connection, December 1997–June 1998, Ferdinand Bauer: Natural History Drawings 1801–1803, June 1999–October 1999, The French Connection: Dumont d’Urville’s voyage round the world 1837–April 2002, Books on Baudin, January–June 2002, Sea Creatures, May–October 2002, Cockatoos, November 2002–March 2003, Feather and Flower, November 2003–February 2004, Transplanted to 7

The exhibitions and acquisition of natural history art collections relating to the early European and Australia reinforce the notion of the argument regarding the significance this material holds.

This is where my interest lies—the reappropriation, if you like—of material, in this case natural history illustrations—in creating a history—as centre moves to what was once periphery—in Tuan’s concept of ‘everyone sees their own place as the centre’14. Material created by the original imperial centre can be exploited by the new, emerging centre, as the sense of belonging to their adopted home grows in members of a settler society. These natural history art collections become significant as the centre of history, of learning, of an area—significant because the knowledge is no longer only contained in the imperial centre.

Natural history not National history museums

It is interesting to note that, unlike many nineteenth century European museums whose exhibits were based on national history, for example military conquests or antiquities, all major Australian colonial museums began as natural history museums. This shows the importance of natural history art in the early forming of a sense of belonging to place, of moving from other to self, from periphery to centre. We must not forget that at the time these museums, art galleries and libraries were being established in the mid- nineteenth century, there was as yet no Australian nation for the colonists to base their nation-state museums upon. would not happen for another fifty years in 1901. European settlement was still very new in the , with Tasmania’s settlement in 1803 making it the second oldest Australian colony.

Tasmania, November 2005–April 2006, Bright and Beautiful: creatures great and small, August–November 2007, Cockatoos, April–November 2010, Flower Power: the botanical prints of Ferdinand Bauer, November 2010–March 2011, William Buelow Gould: Sketchbook of Fishes, 2011. 14 Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press, 1977), p.149. 8

Of The Royal Society of Tasmania’s role in establishing a public museum, William Archer, then Secretary, wrote, ‘[on] the question of the new Museum … it should be made more attractive to the people generally, and this would meet with better support; [and] that it was repugnant to the masses to bring themselves into contact with Government business in connection with subjects of recreation ...’.15 Was this because people were distancing themselves from the government of what they were beginning to see as a foreign power? Were they already imagining themselves as separate from that government? Tasmanians had only recently been able to elect their own representatives in the government Archer was writing about in 1860.

Along with the Tasmanian museum, a library was also evolving from a subscription only institution—and in 1870 was opened as a free public library. From 1881 the library was jointly funded by the State Government and the Hobart City Council, finally becoming the State Library of Tasmania in 1943.

By 1885 however, eleven years after Archer’s death, the role of the government had changed in people’s perceptions to the extent that they now believed that the truly represented them, and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery became a government institution.

Shortly before the Museum became a public entity, The Royal Society of Tasmania appointed Alexander Morton as curator and librarian of the museum on 25 January 1884.16 The second half of the nineteenth century saw a rapid increase in the development and expansion of public museums throughout the world, with an increasing emphasis on museums as instruments of popular education. Morton developed a much broader definition of the museum than his predecessors, creating thematic displays of natural history, ethnology, industry, some history and art, all of which he linked together with a special focus on Tasmania. He demonstrated a particular commitment to popular

15 William Archer, Archer, W. Diaries 1847–74 1860. 16 Joanne K. Huxley, "Courtier to the Powerful and Zealous Curator for the People: The Contribution of Alexander Morton to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 1884– 1907," Kanunnah 2 (2008), p.2. 9 education, and a desire to present not only Tasmania, but also Australia, to tourists at a time when a sense of nation was uncommon in Australian museums.17

Natural history illustration

Behind each natural history watercolour is a fascinating story of place, encounter, violence, bravery, desire and waste. Lure of the Southern Oceans: The Voyages of Dumont d’Urville 1826–1840. 18

Mankind has been creating images of the animals and plants that surround him from the earliest times (Figure 3),19 and images of animals particularly, have had symbolic meanings from the first days of the animalias Figure 3: and bestiaries; the very early animalias supposing human Palaeolithic cave drawing from qualities to the animals; lions symbolising courage, while Lascaux, France. foxes were described as characterising slyness.20 See also William B. jr Ashworth, Emblematic Natural History of the , in N. Jardine, J.A. Secord and E.C. Spary’s Cultures of Natural History.21

17 Joanne K. Huxley, "Courtier to the Powerful and Zealous Curator for the People: The Contribution of Alexander Morton to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 1884– 1907," Kanunnah 2 (2008), p.3. 18 Susan Hunt, Martin Terry and Nicholas Thomas, Lure of the Southern Oceans: The Voyages of Dumont D'urville 1826–1840 (Sydney: Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, 2002), p.13. 19 See Madeleine Pinault, The Painter as Naturalist: From Dürer to Redouté (Paris: Flammarion, 1991), and S. Peter Dance, The Art of Natural History: Animal Illustrators and Their Work (: Country Life Books, 1978). 20 William B. jr Ashworth, "Emblematic Natural History of the Renaissance," Cultures of Natural History, eds. N. Jardine, J.A. Secord and E.C. Spary (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), N. Jardine, J.A. Secord and E.C. Spary, eds., Cultures of Natural History, (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), and S. Peter Dance, The Art of Natural History: Animal Illustrators and Their Work (London: Country Life Books, 1978). 21 William B. jr Ashworth, "Emblematic Natural History of the Renaissance," Cultures of Natural History, eds. N. Jardine, J.A. Secord and E.C. Spary (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 10

The imaging of plants and animals has remained with us, so that today animals and plants are represented in national and state coats of arms and logos. The Australian coat of arms shows a kangaroo and an emu, symbolically used for their inability to move backwards, and the wattle is used as the floral emblem. The state logo of Tasmania is the now extinct Tasmanian Tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus), while the floral emblem is the Blue Gum (Eucalyptus globulus). We identify with the fauna and flora of our location and their images are used to represent us.

However, illustrations of plants and animals are also used in the scientific description of them—natural history art. By natural history art, I mean the of drawing often described as scientific illustration. Zbigniew Jastrzębski explains it succinctly when he writes, ‘scientific illustration is an art in the service of science’.22 Of scientific illustration, the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators notes: ‘They [the artists] use scientifically informed observation, combined with technical and aesthetic skills to accurately portray a subject.’23

This last point raises how a number of important aspects of natural history illustration must be combined to create a successful drawing; the ability to create an aesthetically pleasing image that is also technically skilled and scientifically accurate. As a result, while natural history artworks, particularly those of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries relevant to this research had usually been completed purely as scientific studies, they are often beautiful artistic works in their own right.

22 Zbigniew Jastrzębski, Scientific Illustration: A Guide for the Beginning Artist (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1985), p.5. 23 A. Arber, Guild of Science Illustrators, 2003, Available: http://www.gnsi.org/science-illustration, 14 December 2012. 23 A. Arber, Guild of Nature Science Illustrators, 2003, Available: http://www.gnsi.org/science-illustration, 14 December 2012. 11

Natural history art is a style of representation of plants and animals distinct from, and different to: ethnographical illustration, floral painting, topographic illustration and landscape painting. The art is an important aspect of scientific research. As Gill Saunders

notes, ‘Perhaps more than any other discipline Figure 4:Enchillis obcordata (now has been dependant on illustrations for its development. Pultenaea obcordata) The illustration stands as a substitute for the thing itself, by William Buelow which is ephemeral, fragile, and often unable to survive Gould. removal from its original environment.’24

As the scientific skills and knowledge of the naturalists working during the second scientific revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries advanced, so too did those of the artists working alongside them. Later in the thesis, I will discuss how the collaboration/partnerships of scientist and artist, like those of Ferdinand Bauer /Robert Brown and Charles-Alexandre Lesueur/François Péron combined to create some of the

25 Figure 5:Pencil greatest scientific illustrations of the era. drawings of freshwater crayfish What does a scientific illustration look like? Typically, chela by Brita an illustration is of a single specimen, or part of the Hansen. specimen, shown on a blank background (Figure 4), Watercolour and gauche wasp although some indication of the habitat of the specimen drawing by Anita is sometimes included. The techniques used and the Hansen. amount of detail of any illustration may vary. It can be a simple line drawing, stippled, or pencil drawing, through to full colour illustration (Figure 5). It must be remembered that the illustrations are usually

24 Gill Saunders, Picturing Plants: An Analytical History of Botanical Illustration (Berkeley: University of California Press in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1995), p.7. 25 Elaine Hodges, "Scientific Illustration: A Working Relationship between the Scientist and the Artist," Bioscience 39.2 (1989). 12 reproduced in print (or today, on-line), and so, the original is not intended to be seen by the public.

The illustrations examined for this thesis were made at the time when advances in science changed the way natural history was viewed and scientists used new techniques— for example the use of microscopes—and more rigorous methodologies in their research. Artists began to use these methods as well. As will be discussed later, Ferdinand Bauer and Charles-Alexandre Lesueur used microscopes to draw the morphology of their subjects. Certain conventions began to be applied in the presentation of scientific illustrations over time. ‘One convention that is more or less standard in botanical illustration is the de- contextualisation or isolation of the specimen on a blank ground.’26 It is now the practice that fish are drawn facing to the left, and insects are depicted as symmetrical if drawn from above. Also, convention dictates that light is shown coming from the top left of a page.27 Depending on the use of an illustration, a single specimen can be drawn ‘warts and all’, or, especially in botanical drawings, a species showing all aspects of the growing seasons—from buds, flowers, fruit to seed pods—can be included in the one illustration. In illustrating some species, fish for example, the drawing made uses a combination of several specimens.28

Further publications useful in giving an understanding to the technical aspects of scientific illustration include: Phyllis Wood Scientific illustration: a guide to biological, zoological, and medical rendering techniques, design, printing and

26 Gill Saunders, Picturing Plants: An Analytical History of Botanical Illustration (Berkeley: University of California Press in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1995), p.15. 27 See Zbigniew Jastrzębski, Scientific Illustration: A Guide for the Beginning Artist (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1985) for more technical information on scientific illustration. 28 Information garnered from conversations with Dr Brita Hansen, formerly taxonomic illustrator for the CSIRO Marine Laboratories, Hobart, Tasmania, and from personal experience as a plant and wildlife illustrator. 13 display29 and Elaine Hodges’s The Guild handbook of scientific illustration.30 Brian Ford has published some interesting work on the history of scientific illustration, for example; Images of Science: A History of Scientific Illustration,31and Scientific Illustration in the Eighteenth Century.32

While Ferdinand Bauer and Charles-Alexandre Lesueur were employed as natural history artists, many of the illustrations made during the nineteenth century that I examine for this thesis, although completed by ‘gentlemen scholars’ or ‘amateur artists’, still come within Jastrzębski’s description of serving science. The illustrations were the work of early settlers whose interest in the botany and zoology of their new home led them to investigate natural history in a scientific, descriptive manner.

The interest in natural history art, while never fading completely, has experienced a renaissance in the past few decades, as concern about wilderness and the environment—and a sense of belonging—has grown. The escalation of interest in this topic has seen a number of authors producing lavishly illustrated publications on natural history art, for example, Madeleine Pinault, Albert Boime, Brian Ford, Lys de Bray and S. Peter Dance.33 Helen Hewson has produced what is regarded as the definitive work on the history of Australian

29 Phyllis Wood and Patrick. McDonnell, Scientific Illustration: A Guide to Biological, Zoological, and Medical Rendering Techniques, Design, Printing, and Display, 2nd. ed. (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, c1994). 30 Elaine R.S. Hodges, The Guild Handbook of Scientific Illustration (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley, c2003). 31 Brian J Ford, Images of Science: A History of Scientific Illustration (London: British Library, 1992). 32 Brian J Ford, Scientific Illustration in the Eighteenth Century, 2000, Available: www.brianjford.com, 19 September 2011. 33 Madeleine Pinault, The Painter as Naturalist: From Dürer to Redouté (Paris: Flammarion, 1991), Albert Boime, ": A Birdwatcher's Fanciful Flights," Art History 22.5 (1999), Brian J Ford, Images of Science: A History of Scientific Illustration (London: British Library, 1992), Lys De Bray, The Art of Botanical Illustration: A History of the Classic Illustrators and Their Achievements (Royston [] Eagle Editions, 2001), S. Peter Dance, The Art of Natural History: Animal Illustrators and Their Work (London: Country Life Books, 1978). 14 botanical illustration in Australia: 300 years of botanical illustration.34 In the same series is Penny Olsen’s Feather and Brush35 on ornithological illustration in Australia. The vast catalogue of literature about natural history art includes works on specific expeditions, zoological or botanical species, and of course, specific artists. Gabrielle Baglione and Cédric Crémière, Jacqueline Bonnemains and Sarah Thomas have produced exquisite books based on the art of Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, 36 while Ferdinand Bauer’s work is examined in David Mabberley’s Ferdinand Bauer: the nature of discovery, Marlene Norst’s Ferdinand Bauer: the Australian natural history drawings and Peter Watt et al., An exquisite eye.37

While the majority of artists working professionally throughout the nineteenth century were men (particularly the artists on the great scientific expeditions), the recent challenging of traditional images of identity, has led to an increasing interest in the work of the ‘amateur’ artists—predominantly women—who illustrated the plants and animals they saw in their new homes in the colonies. Caroline Jordan writes of such women in Picturesque Pursuits: colonial

34 Helen Hewson, Australia: 300 Years of Botanical Illustration (Collingwood, Vic: CSIRO Publishing, 1999). 35 Penny Olsen, Feather and Brush: Three Centuries of Australian Bird Art (Collingwood: CSIRO Publishing, c2001). 36 Gabrielle Baglione and Cédric Crémière, Charles-Alexandre Lesueur: Peintre Voyageur, Un Tresor Oublie (2009), Jacqueline Bonnemains, Elliott Christopher Forsyth, Bernard William Smith, Charles Alexandre Lesueur and Nicolas Martin Petit, eds., Baudin in Australian Waters: The Artwork of the French Voyage of Discovery to the Southern Lands, 1800–1804, (: Oxford University Press in association with the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 1988), Sarah Thomas, The Encounter, 1802: Art of the Flinders and Baudin Voyages (Adelaide: Art Gallery of South Australia, 2002). 37 David Mabberley, Ferdinand Bauer: The Nature of Discovery, Illustrations from the Natural Museum (London: The of London, 1999), Marlene J Norst, Ferdinand Bauer: The Australian Natural History Drawings, Art in Natural History (London: (Natural History), 1989), Peter Watts, Jo Anne Pomfrett and David Mabberley, An Exquisite Eye: The Australian Flora & Fauna Drawings 1801–1820 of Ferdinand Bauer (Glebe, New South Wales: Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, c1997). 15 women artists & the amateur tradition.38 Of course, it must not be forgotten that women like Elizabeth Gould (nee Coxen) and Frances Harriet Hooker (wife of Dr Joseph Dalton Hooker) illustrated the work of their husbands, often with little recognition of their role. The Tasmanian women artists Louisa Meredith and Mary Louise Allport, often regarded as being in the amateur tradition despite both having worked as artists before arriving in the colony, were very influential colonial natural history artists working in the nineteenth century. The ‘disinterested’ gentlemen amateur naturalists and artists of the colonies also played an important role. The illustrations and work of William Archer by this author was based on the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery’s acquisition in 2004 of botanical illustrations by Tasmanian born William Archer (a wealthy pastoralist also regarded as the first Australian born botanist).39

The links between natural history, science, exploration, and empire have been discussed by a number of authors. N. Jardine, J.A. Secord and E.C. Spary’s, Cultures of Natural History,40 is a case in point with a number of essays relating to this topic. Janet Browne’s Biogeography and Empire41 in that publication has been particularly influential in this area. John E. Crowley in his Taken on the Spot: The Visual Appropriation of New France for the Global British Landscape,42 makes the case for landscape painting being a form of appropriation. This is a concept I will explore in connection to natural history art, when I contend that by collecting the natural history art images made by the early expeditions, settler societies reappropriate their own fauna and flora.

38 Caroline Jordan, Picturesque Pursuits: Colonial Women Artists & the Amateur Tradition (Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2005). 39 Anita Hansen, "The Illustrations and Work of William Archer," Master of Fine Art, University of Tasmania, 2007. 40 N. Jardine, J.A. Secord and E.C. Spary, eds., Cultures of Natural History, (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 41 Janet Browne, "Biogeoraphy and Empire," Cultures of Natural History, eds. N. Jardine, J.A. Secord and E.C. Spary (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 42 John E. Crowley, "'Taken on the Spot': The Visual Appropriation of New France for the Global British Landscape," The Canadian Historical Review 86.1, March (2005). 16

Ian McLean in Reclaiming Australia: the Port Jackson School and its exile,43 also writes on the reappropriation of images by museums, art galleries and libraries. Concerning the Natural History Museum’s collections of work by artists of the Port Jackson School and other early artists in Australia, McLean argues ‘a nation’s treasures can be of little value as reproductions, or on the other side of the world. Not until they are to Australia will they be fully available to Australian scholars’.44 The recent acquisition of works by George Raper and the TAL&Dai-ichi (Earl of Derby) collection lend weight to this argument.

Museums, libraries and art galleries

Natural history illustrations have always played an important role in the collections of our museums, art galleries and libraries. It is an important aspect to note that all the major colonial museums in Australia began as natural history museums. As Chris Healy writes in From the ruins of colonialism: history as social memory,45 the collections were often based on paper material, for example: letters, journals, maps, and most importantly for this thesis, natural history illustrations.

The origins of today’s museums stem from the early private collections in Italy during the fifteenth century, and by the sixteenth century this activity had spread throughout Europe.46 While the early collections were the privilege only of royalty, by the seventeenth century the cabinets of curiosity had become de

43 Ian McLean, "Reclaiming Australia: The Port Jackson School and Its Exile," Art and Australia 33.1 (1995). 44 Ian McLean, "Reclaiming Australia: The Port Jackson School and Its Exile," Art and Australia 33.1 (1995). 45 Chris Healy, From the Ruins of Colonialism: History as Social Memory, Studies in Australian History, eds. Alan Gilbert, Patricia Grimshaw and Peter Spearritt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 46 Ken Arnold, Cabinets for the Curious: Looking Back at Early English Museums, Perspectives on Collecting, ed. Susan Pearce (Aldershot, Hants, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006). 17 rigueur for aristocrats and aspiring gentlemen.47 By the eighteenth century these private collections were entering the public sphere when they began to be donated to the public, moving from the private to the public domain; the British Museum had its origins in the private collection of Sir (1660–1753).48 As museums moved into the public domain, their role changed from one of pure entertainment to one that included public education. As Lloyd Robson and Michael Roe note: ‘Reform and progressive legislation characterised the period [the nineteenth century], and the ‘civilising’ effect of educational institutions such as museums was emphasised by reformers.’49 See also Lisanne Gibson The Uses of Art: Constructing Australian Identities, Janet Minihan The Nationalization of Culture: The Development of State Subsidies to the Arts in Great Britain, and Joanne Huxley Courtier to the Powerful and Zealous Curator for the People: The Contribution of Alexander Morton to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 1884–1907,50 for further information on this topic.

The roles of the museum and the library have gone through radical transformations in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This is particularly so in settler societies like Australia, New Zealand and Canada, societies that are trying to come to terms with the problematic question of belonging and identity in the post-colonial era. Clair Smith’s Decolonising the Museum: The National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, Susan Pearce’s A New Way of Looking at Old Things, Stephen Bann’s On Living in a

47 Katie Whitaker, "The Culture of Curiosity," Cultures of Natural History, eds. N. Jardine, J.A. Secord and E.C. Spary (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p.75. 48 Janet Minihan, The Nationalization of Culture: The Development of State Subsidies to the Arts in Great Britain (New York: New York University Press, 1977), p.11. 49 Lloyd Robson and Michael Banks, A Short History of Tasmania (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp.143–144. 50 Lisanne Gibson, The Uses of Art: Constructing Australian Identities, Uqp Cultural and Media Policy, ed. Stuart Cunningham (St Lucia, Qld.: University of Queensland Press in association with the Australian Key Centre for Cultural and Media Policy, , 2001), Joanne K. Huxley, "Courtier to the Powerful and Zealous Curator for the People: The Contribution of Alexander Morton to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 1884–1907," Kanunnah 2 (2008). 18

New Country and Chris Healy’s Histories and Collecting: Museums, Objects and Memories51 are among a number of recent articles on this topic. James Gore writes of these changes in his recent doctoral thesis:

… museums around the world have undergone dramatic changes in terms of their composition, roles and interpretation: forced to adapt to new pressures and priorities, and to become more representative of the communities in which they exist … in particular, diverse groups, including indigenous people, women and ethnic minorities, increasingly challenge traditional images of mainstream national identity.52

How does this explain the lasting, if not arguably increasing, popularity of historical collections held in the state-run museums and libraries: the ‘Australiana’,53 ‘Tasmaniana’ and ‘Canadiana’ collections relating to the early European settlement of these communities? This is an interesting example of the contradictory, challenging, vexing and problematic ideas of identity, ‘self and other’ that appear within settler societies.

As in many of the museum collections of Britain, Europe, Canada, New Zealand and the of America, which have their origins in private collections, much of late eighteenth and nineteenth century natural history art in the collections of the major cultural institutions of Tasmania today also had their origins in the collections of private individuals or organisations.

51 Claire Smith, "Decolonising the Museum: The National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, Dc," ANTIQUITY 79.304 (2005), Susan Pearce, "A New Way of Looking at Old Things," Museum International 51.2 (1999), Stephen Bann, "On Living in a New Country," The New Museology, ed. Peter Vergo (London: Reaktion Books, 1989), Chris Healy, "Histories and Collecting: Museums, Objects and Memories," Memory and History in Twentieth-Century Australia, eds. Kate Darian-Smith and Paula Hamilton (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1994). 52 James Michael Gore, "Representations of History and Nation in Museums in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand—the National Museum of Australia and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa," Doctor of Philosophy, , 2002, p.1. 53 Australiana n. pl items, esp. of historical interest, originating in or relating to Australia, as early books, furniture, paintings etc, A (editor-in-chief) Delbridge, The Macquarie Dictionary: Second Revision, ed. A Delbridge (Sydney: University of New South Wales, 1982). 19

The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery owes a large part of their natural history collection to that of The Royal Society of Tasmania’s collection. The Society’s natural history artefacts were donated to the people of Tasmania in 1885.54 Later, the Society’s art collection was also made available to the public. Max Banks and Anthony Brown have produced a Draft Report on the Art Collection of the Royal Society of Tasmania,55 which catalogues the paintings, sketchbooks and prints given to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery on permanent long-term loan by The Royal Society of Tasmania in the 1960s.56 See also Collection: Tasmania Museum and Art Gallery57 for further information on the TMAG collections. Joanne Huxley, Anita Hansen and Hendrick Kolenberg,58 have produced works on aspects of the collections of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.

The State Library of Tasmania has a number of collections that contain extensive natural history art; as original watercolours, sketches, prints and within beautifully illustrated books. There has been a long history of philanthropy in the establishing of library collections in Tasmania. This is most

54 The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) was established in Hobart by The Royal Society of Tasmania and opened to the public in 1852. It has occupied the present site, between Dock and Macquarie Street, since 1863. In 1885, TMAG became a Government authority under the control of a Board of Trustees that also controlled the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens. TMAG is now controlled by a Board of Trustees which is set up pursuant to Section 3 of the Tasmanian Museum Act 1950. At the same time a new board was set up to administer the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens. Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Annual Report (Hobart: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 2009–2010). 55 MR Banks and AV Brown, Draft Report on the Art Collection of the Royal Society of Tasmania (Hobart: The Council of the Royal Society of Tasmania, 2002). 56 MR Banks and AV Brown, Draft Report on the Art Collection of the Royal Society of Tasmania (Hobart: The Council of the Royal Society of Tasmania, 2002). 57 Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Collection: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, ed. Caroline Mordaunt (Hobart: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 2007). 58 Anita Hansen, "The Illustrations and Work of William Archer," Master of Fine Art, University of Tasmania, 2007, Joanne K. Huxley, "Courtier to the Powerful and Zealous Curator for the People: The Contribution of Alexander Morton to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 1884–1907," Kanunnah 2 (2008), Hendrik Kolenberg, "Introduction," The Art Bulletin of Tasmania, ed. Hendrik Kolenberg (Hobart: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 1983). 20 evident in the rich and extensive Tasmaniana collections—of particular note are collections by Allport, Crowther and Walker. A particular feature of these collections is the movement from the private to the public domain. Perhaps it shows private collectors recognising the importance of ‘local’ before the state does—of individuals beginning to define themselves by their location, while governments are still tied to the colonising powers, viewing themselves still as a peripheral colonial outpost of the central imperial power.

In the 1960s Henry Allport bequeathed to the people of Tasmania his rich and comprehensive collection of nearly 6000 rare books and manuscripts relating to Australia and the Pacific, approximately 2,000 original artworks, almost 500 prints, as well as albums and sketchbooks containing further treasures. Convict artists and the work of many colonial landscape artists is a feature of the collection.

Henry Allport was concerned that the pictures collection should not remain static after his death, but that significant additional works could also be acquired. To this end, he left a substantial sum for continuing purchases. He gave general guidelines, but no strict injunctions about the type of works to be acquired. Generally, nothing produced after 1880 should be added, and then only works which supplemented and/or complemented the existing collections. To date, nearly 1000 titles have been added to the original bequest. By far, the vast majority of these titles relate to the early exploration of Tasmania.

Exploration

When the first European expeditions of exploration of the ‘Age of Wonder’ or ‘the second scientific revolution’59 of the eighteenth century, ventured into the southern oceans, they encountered new peoples and also new unimaginably strange and exotic plants and animals. They met bizarre creatures that hopped about on enormous hind legs, carrying their young in pouches; giant flightless

59 See Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder (London: Harper Press, 2009), for Age of Wonder and Second Scientific Revolution. 21 birds; egg laying mammals; tall flowering trees that remained evergreen, not shedding their leaves with the coming of a mid-year winter; beautiful orchids; brightly coloured butterflies, iridescent beetles and much, much more.

They returned to Europe with specimens and illustrations of the astonishing new fauna and flora. These wondrous curiosities sparked the imaginations of scientists and lay-people alike, but these new plants and animals defied the traditional classifications of the era. Naturalists began looking at these finds, not as curiosities, but with curiosity. These studies would eventually, in the mid-nineteenth century, lead to a revolutionary way of viewing the world and the creatures within it.

As these new lands, with their strange enigmatic plants and creatures were beginning to be explored, naturalists and lay-people alike demanded illustrations and descriptions of what was being discovered. They wanted to see these amazing creatures. They wanted to grow the exotic plants. They wanted to own them— and in some cases, the lands from which they came. The British and French quest for empire and scientific knowledge in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries led to further expeditions and to European settlement of their newly-appropriated colonies.

In recent years, along with the growing search for identity in the postcolonial era, there has been a renewed interest in the history of the early exploration of Australia by the Dutch, English and French expeditions, including the activity around the coast of Tasmania, as people seek an understanding of European settlement of the land. This is demonstrated by the increasing number of publications in this area with writers such as Edward Duyker, Denis Abbott, Frank Horner, Marthe Melguen, Robert Tiley and Colin Wallace60 for example,

60 See Edward Duyker, An Officer of the Blue: Marc-Joseph Marion Dufresne, South Sea Explorer, 1724–1772 (Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 1994), Denis Abbott, "The Scientific Results of the D'entrecasteaux Voyage in Van Dieman's Land, 1792–93," IAMSLIC Conference Proceedings 2004 (Hobart: CSIRO Marine Research, 2005), Frank Benson Horner, The French Reconnaissance: Baudin in Australia 1801–1803 (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1987), J.W. Markham and A.L. Duda eds., French 22 writing of the French and Dutch expeditions. Edward Duyker, in particular, has published a number of books and articles that relate to the early French explorers of the southern oceans and the important role of their early publications—often containing exquisite natural history illustrations—in Australian and Tasmanian history.

France’s foremost rivals in the southern oceans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were the British, who in the late eighteenth century laid claim to what would later become Australia. A number of expedition leaders published records of their exploits, among them James Cook,61 Matthew Flinders (A voyage to Terra Australis),62 and James Clark-Ross. Joseph Dalton Hooker, the assistant-surgeon and naturalist on the Clark- also published a number of books from that expedition.63 Numerous volumes of previously unpublished private correspondence, memoirs, diaries and journals by the protagonists in Australia’s early history have also been published. From the journals and private letters we can gain an insight and understanding of the individuals who were so prominent in our history. The interest in Australia’s

Voyages of Exploration and Science in the : An Ocean of Discovery Throughout the Pacific Ocean , Robert Tiley, Australian Navigators: Picking up Shells and Catching Butterflies in an Age of Revolution (East Roseville, N.S.W.: Kangaroo Press, 2002), Colin Wallace, The Lost Australia of François Péron (London: Nottingham Court Press, 1984). 61 For more on Captain James Cook see, Lynne Withey, Voyages of Discovery: Captain Cook and the Exploration of the Pacific (London: Hutchinson, 1988), Bernard William Smith, Imagining the Pacific: In the Wake of the Cook Voyages (Carlton, Vic: Melbourne University Press at the Miegunyah Press, 1992), John Robson, Captain Cook's World: Maps of the Life and Voyages of James Cook R.N. (: Random House New Zealand, 2000), T C Mitchell, Captain Cook and the South Pacific (: Australian National University Press, 1979), David Mackay, In the Wake of Cook: Exploration, Science & Empire, 1780–1801 (Wellington: Victoria University Press, c,1985),Alan John Frost, Voyage of the Endeavour: Captain Cook and the Discovery of the Pacific (St. Leonards, NSW, Australia: Allen & Unwin, 1998). 62 Matthew Flinders and Tim Flannery (edited and introduced), Terra Australis: Matthew Flinders' Great Adventures in the Circumnavigation of Australia / Edited and Introduced by Tim Flannery (Melbourne, Vic: c2000). 63 Joseph Dalton Hooker, The Botany of the Voyage of H. M. Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror in the Years 1839–1843, under the Command of Captain Sir : Flora Tasmaniae (London: Lovell Reeve, 1859). 23 early exploration has produced a large store of literature about the more well- known individuals. Matthew Flinders and Nicolas Baudin are the subject of a number of recent publications by authors such as Anthony Brown, Max Colwell, Miriam Estensen and, of course, Jean Fornasiero, Peter Monteath and John West-Sooby. The journals of the naturalists and artists on board the voyages are also being published, among them Michael Hoare’s The Resolution Journal of Johann Reinhold Forster and Sydney Parkinson’s Journal of a voyage to the South Seas.64 These volumes often contain the first images of the Tasmanian fauna and flora.

Recently, a number of general history books on the early expeditions of exploration to Australian and Tasmanian waters have also been published.65 Along with the interest in the exploits of the early explorers, there has been fresh interest in the manner in which these explorers and scientists saw, or imagined, the new worlds they ventured into. The art of the early explorers and settlers as they came to terms with the new and bewildering peoples, landscape, and fauna and flora has also been examined. Bernard Smith’s Documents on art and taste in Australia: the colonial period 1770–1914and The Art of the first fleet, & other early Australian drawings, were pivotal works in this field.66 Tim Bonyhady’s The Colonial Image: Australian Painting 1800–188067 gives a good account of the early colonial artists, including the natural history illustrators. The early Tasmanian landscape artists John Glover and William Piguenit are also well represented in publications from exhibitions

64 Johann Reinhold Forster and Michael Hoare, The Resolution Journal of Johann Reinhold Forster, 1772–1775 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1982), Sydney Parkinson, Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas (London: Caliban Books, 1984). 65 See Erwin Herman Josef Feeken and Gerda Elisabeth Emma. Feeken, The Discovery and Exploration of Australia (Melbourne: Thomas Nelson, 1970), Ronald H. Fritze, New Worlds: The Great Voyages of Discovery, 1400–1600 (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2002). 66 Bernard William Smith, ed., Documents on Art and Taste in Australia: The Colonial Period 1770–1914, (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1975), Bernard William Smith and Alwyne Wheeler, eds., The Art of the First Fleet, & Other Early Australian Drawings, (Melbourne: Oxford University Press in association with the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the British Museum (Natural History), 1988). 67 Tim Bonyhady, The Colonial Image: Australian Painting 1800–1880 (Chippendale, Australia: Ellsyd Press, 1987). 24 of their works. See especially David Hansen’s John Glover and the Picturesque and Christa Johannes and Anthony Brown’s WC Piguenit Retrospective.68

The two-hundredth anniversary of ’s birth in 2009 has seen a plethora of literature on the early years of exploration and colonial settlement in Australia with many references to Darwin’s visit to Tasmania. Ian McCalman’s Darwin’s Armada: How four voyagers to Australasia won the battle for evolution and changed the world69 as an example, examines the role of scientific discoveries from the voyages to the southern oceans that would change the way we look at the world and its formation.70 Of course, these publications highlight the significant role the unique fauna and flora of the southern oceans had in the new ways of viewing the world. They also stress the brief time that has passed since Europeans first settled in Tasmania and began to call it home.

Belonging and identity

Belonging. The Macquarie Dictionary defines this as, ‘relationship, affinity: a sense of belonging,’71 but it can be more than that. How does one belong to a place taken from others?

The first Europeans to establish a settlement in Tasmania—Australia’s island state—were the British in 1803. When they decided to settle there they knew it

68 David Hansen, John Glover and the Colonial Picturesque (Hobart: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 2003), Christa E. Johannes and Anthony V. Brown, W. C. Piguenit Retrospective (Hobart: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 1992). 69 Iain McCalman, Darwin's Armada: How Four Voyagers to Australasia Won the Battle for Evolution and Changed the World (Camberwell, Victoria: Viking, Penguin Group, 2009). 70 See also Julie Ogden, Charles Darwin: An Australian Selection (Canberra: National Museum of Australia Press, 2008), A.J. Marshall, Darwin and Huxley in Australia (Sydney: Hodder and Stoughton Ltd., 1970), Smith, Bernard William. European Vision and the South Pacific. 2nd ed. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1989. 71 A (editor-in-chief) Delbridge, The Macquarie Dictionary: Second Revision, ed. A Delbridge (Sydney: University of New South Wales, 1982) p.193. 25 was already inhabited, however, they chose to see the land as what is now termed terra nullius.72 The Macquarie Dictionary describes terra nullius as an ‘inhabited territory belonging to no state, and held not to be a state within itself, that is, having a population without a formalised political organisation or system of individual ownership’ or ‘uninhabited territory belonging to no state’ sense.73 The European settlement of Australia and the circumstances that surround it continues to cause debate. Stuart Banner and Michael Connor have written on the legal aspects of this, and Jeanette Hoorn, Merete Borch, Henry Reynolds, Tim Bonyhady and Andrew Fitzmaurice have also written on the effects of terra nullius from colonial times to the present.74

They came to found a penal colony. When first settled Van Diemen’s Land (as Tasmania was then known) was a place of exile, banishment, punishment and brutality—the place to send Britain’s unwanted offenders. To many a prisoner and gaoler it was an alien, hostile, harsh, inhospitable wilderness to be feared, conquered, tamed. It was also an invasion; a displacement of the indigenous inhabitants of the land. This melancholic beginning has provoked in Tasmanians intense, diverse and far ranging reactions in their search for identity and belonging from the period of early settlement to the present—from alienation and disgrace to self-esteem and a strong sense of belonging or attachment to place.

72 The early colonisers did not use the term terra nullius, however, it is the term now used legally to describe the European occupation of Australia. 73 Terra Nullius, 2005, The Macquarie Library Pty Ltd, Credo Reference, Available: http://www.credoreference.com/entry/macqdict/terra_nullius, 4 January 2012. 74 Stuart Banner, "Why Terra Nullius? Anthropology and Property Law in Early Australia," Law and History Review 23.1 (2005), Michael Connor, The Invention of Terra Nullius: Historical and Legal Fictions on the Foundation of Australia (Sydney: Macleay Press, 2005), Henry Reynolds, The Law of the Land (Penguin, 1987), Merete Borch, "Rethinking the Origins of Terra Nullius," Australian Historical Studies 32.117 (2001), Andrew Fitzmaurice, "The Genealogy of Terra Nullius," Australian Historical Studies 129 (20007), Tim Bonyhady, The Colonial Earth (Carlton South: Melbourne University Press, 2000), Jeanette Hoorn, "Exposing the Lie of Terra Nullius: 's Awakabal Album," Art and Australia 31.1 (1993). 26

In this thesis I examine the progress of a population of exiled prisoners and their gaolers toward a society with a strong sense of belonging to the place of former ostracism; how a population moves from conceiving their locality and themselves as at the periphery of a colonial power to being the centre of their own society. This is investigated through the materials considered as significant by that society and then showcased as historically important in their public institutions: their museums, art galleries and libraries.

Of course, a sense of belonging to place is not as simple as moving from one loyalty to another, especially in today’s multicultural society, where it is possible to have pluralist, or multiple, sites of belonging. Henry Reynolds notes, ‘Settlers developed dual loyalties and attachment to Tasmania did not imply rejection of Britain.’75 In line with this, writers such as Homi Bhabha argue that thinking of local culture as ‘uncontaminated or self-contained’ is a significant flaw.76 In the same volume Zygmunt Bauman also ponders the challenging questions of identity in this postcolonial era, ‘One thinks of identity whenever one is not sure of where one belongs ... how to make sure that people around would accept this placement as right and proper’.77

For the purposes of this thesis, I have focussed on the works of Australian writers such as David Trigger, Jane Mulcock, Jeff Malpas and Rob Garbutt78

75 Henry Reynolds, ": Tasmanian Patriotism," New Zealand Journal of History 5–6 (1982), p.24. 76 Homi Bhabha, "Culture's in-Between," Questions of Cultural Identity, eds. Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay (London: Sage Publications, 2003), p.54. See also Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994). 77 Zygmunt Bauman, "From Pilgrim to Tourist – or a Short History of Identity," Questions of Cultural Identity, eds. Stuart Hall and Paul Du Gay (London: Sage Publications, 2003), p.19. 78 David Trigger and Gareth Griffiths, eds., Disputed Territories: Land, Culture and Identity in Settler Societies, (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, c2003), David Trigger and Jane Mulcock, "Forests as Spiritually Significant Places: Nature, Culture and 'Belonging' in Australia," The Australian Journal of Anthropology 16.3 (2005), J. E. Malpas, Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), Rob Garbutt, "White "Autochthony"," ACRAWSA e-journal 2 (2006), 28 August 2008 , 27 when looking at belonging and identity as their work looks more closely at the dilemmas encountered in a postcolonial settler society. On the prospect of forming a sense of place, or of belonging to place, in a former penal colony, Alan Atkinson writes, ‘The purpose of settlement—the disposal of criminals— might seem uninspiring. But the very fact that this was to be a community of convicts and ex-convicts raised … the possibility of imaginative attachment to a land of exile’.79 David Trigger and Jane Mulcock assert, when discussing non-’ placing spiritual significance to forests, that, ‘to claim that a place or thing [a tree or forest] has spiritual significance for an individual or community is to imply that it is has been inscribed with considerable personal and cultural meaning’.80 I will discuss the concept of indigenous and non-indigenous inhabitants later in this chapter.

I propose that in this era of migration and movement within post-settler societies there may be an argument for the suggestion that a sense of belonging to place can be a case of the place choosing the individual. An instance of a spiritual, unworldly connection by place to an individual—a suggestion not readily conceived as feasible within Western values. Truly a case of belonging to place, or perhaps it could be described more accurately as belonging in place. Thomas Dunlap hints at this possibility in Nature and the English Diaspora: Environment and History in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand when he quotes a Crow elder,

You know, I think if people stay somewhere long enough—even white people—the spirits will begin to speak to them. It's the power of the spirits coming up from the land. The spirits and the

Rob Garbutt, "The Locals: A Critical Survey of the Idea in Recent Australian Scholarly Writing," Australian Folklore 21 (2006). 79 Alan Atkinson, The Europeans in Australia: A History: Vol.1: The Beginning, 2 vols. (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1997), p.ix. 80 David Trigger and Jane Mulcock, "Forests as Spiritually Significant Places: Nature, Culture and 'Belonging' in Australia," The Australian Journal of Anthropology 16.3 (2005), p.308. 28

old powers aren't lost, they just need people to be around long enough and the spirits will begin to influence them’.81

David Trigger and Jane Mulcock discuss this possible spiritual connection to place by settler societies when they write, ‘Ideas about nature, culture and belonging are strongly implicated in any discussion about spirituality and landscape’,82 which goes to the heart of my argument. While Trigger and Mulcock base their argument on forests as possessing spiritual significance, it is not only the landscape and forests that possess this mystical significance, but it is a place; be it wilderness, rural or urban, that can have ‘significance’ for an individual and create within that individual a sense of belonging. It need not take generations for this sense of belonging to develop, it can be instantaneous. Trigger and Muldock also discuss the vexed problem of indigeneity in settler societies where citizens now trace their ancestry back several generations in the settled land.83

Places can exhibit so strong a spiritual connectiveness to some individuals that it is not necessary to settle in that place long before a sense of belonging is formed. Laurie Brinklow writes that islands, in particular, seem to engender strong feelings of connectedness in people. In her essay The Proliferation of Island Studies Brinklow notes this strong sense of place some people feel when encountering Tasmania, ‘Or they can’t explain it—it was a feeling: they just knew they were home’.84 Tasmania, being an island, appears to have this

81 Thomas R. Dunlap, Nature and the English Diaspora: Environment and History in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p.34. 82 David Trigger and Jane Mulcock, "Forests as Spiritually Significant Places: Nature, Culture and 'Belonging' in Australia," The Australian Journal of Anthropology 16.3 (2005), p.307. 83 David Trigger and Jane Mulcock, "Forests as Spiritually Significant Places: Nature, Culture and 'Belonging' in Australia," The Australian Journal of Anthropology 16.3 (2005), p.307. 84 Laurie Brinklow, "The Proliferation of Isalnd Studies," (2011), Essay, 3 November 2011 . 29 ability of provoking strong feelings of belonging and sense of place. Laurie Brinklow further notes,

I’ve come to feel at home in Tasmania, going from what place theorist Edward Relph in his book Place and Placedness calls ‘behavioural insidedness’ to ‘empathetic insidedness’, from where I merely recognise familiar places and know the lay of the land, to emotionally connecting with the place. In fact ... I find myself verging on ‘existential insidedness’, where I’m unselfconsciously aware that I’m a part of Tasmania; I’m in my comfort zone here’.85

As early as 1836 authors such as Henry Melville were writing about Tasmanian’s capacity to form special attractions in people when he wrote, ‘I have yet experienced the power Van Diemen’s Land possesses to create attachment to its soil.’86 In Australian Nationalism: Tasmanian Patriotism Henry Reynolds also draws attention to this power to attract, and also the role of the Tasmanian landscape in what he terms ‘island patriotism’.87

The question of settler society belonging has become an increasingly problematic and confronting one in this postcolonial world. Museums, art galleries and libraries have a challenging role in their interpretation of this growing awareness of belonging and identity. The developing consciousness is evidenced in settler societies like Australia, New Zealand and Canada, by the mounting number of publications released since the early 1980s which specifically examine the matter of national identity, sense of belonging and self. Among the first to write of this was Richard White in Inventing

85 Laurie Brinklow, "The Proliferation of Isalnd Studies," (2011), Essay, 3 November 2011 . 86 Henry Melville, History of the Island of Van Diemen's Land from the Year 1824 to 1835 Inclusive During the Administration of Lieutenant Governor George Arthur (London: John Richardson, 1836), p.124. 87 Henry Reynolds, "Australian Nationalism: Tasmanian Patriotism," New Zealand Journal of History 5–6 (1982). 30

Australia,88 published in 1981. Also writing on this theme a Stephen Bann, Michèle Dominy, James Gore and others.89

While in my research to date I have found no publications or articles directly relating to the link between belonging and early natural history art, Thomas R. Dunlap writes ‘about the ways in which the Anglo settlers of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States have in the past two centuries sought to understand their lands and find their place in them by the use of their culture’s organised nature knowledge—science’.90

Existing alongside, and emerging in this debate on national identity, is a growing sentiment among inhabitants of settler societies of a sense of belonging to the land. This is particularly evident among individuals whose families have lived in the country for several generations; they identify solely with the country of their and their forebears’ birth. In Australia, for example, people no longer identify with their former British colonial rulers, and in the multicultural society that is now Australia, many people simply cannot. A number of writers are now discussing the possibility of a new definition of ‘indigenous’ in this light, including Ian McLean, Rob Garbutt, Anthony Moran and David Pearson.91 Australia is not unique in facing these questions. It is a problem faced by all settler societies and former colonies.

88 Richard White, Inventing Australia: Images and Indentity, 1688–1980 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1981). 89 See also, Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, eds., The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, (London: Routledge, 1995), Stephen Bann, "On Living in a New Country," The New Museology, ed. Peter Vergo (London: Reaktion Books, 1989), Peter Vergo, ed., The New Museology, (London: Reaktion Books, 1989), Gareth Griffiths, "Afterword: Apprehending 'Disputed Territories'," Disputed Territories : Land, Culture and Identity in Settler Societies (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, c2003). 90 Thomas R. Dunlap, Nature and the English Diaspora: Environment and History in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p.1. 91 Ian McLean, White Aborigines: Identity Politics in Australian Art (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), David Pearson, "Theorizing Citizenship in British Settler Societies," Ethnic and Racial Studies 25.6 (2002), Rob Garbutt, "White "Autochthony"," ACRAWSA e-journal 2 (2006), 28 August 2008 , Anthony Moran, "As 31

The New Caledonia and Canadian case studies

Natural history art collections in major cultural institutions of Canada and New Caledonia will be analysed as case studies. Why these two countries? There are many similarities—and indeed dissimilarities—in the natural history art collections of these two countries and their histories, and that of Australia that invite comparative examination. The official policy regarding the natural history art collections in the public institutions of these two countries vary greatly and this will be discussed in detail later in this thesis.

There are many connections/similarities in the early European histories of Australia (and Tasmania) and New Caledonia. For example, Captain James Cook, on his second expedition in1772–1775, sailed from the east coast of Australia to New Caledonia. The 1791 French expedition of Bruni d’Entrecasteaux sailed from Tasmania to New Caledonia. Dumont d’Urville also visited both places on his expeditions. Dumont d’Urville visited Tasmania on his 1826–29 expedition and again in 1839 with the ship Astrolabe. As these expeditions visited both Tasmania and New Caledonia on the voyage, the same artists and scientists worked on the fauna and flora of both places at about the same time. There are many other links between Australia/Tasmania and New Caledonia, both were once part of the supercontinent Gondwana. Historically there are other connections as well. Tasmania was originally settled as a British penal colony, and New Caledonia was once a French penal colony. Today, New Caledonia is still not a fully independent country. The Nouméa Accord of 1998 established a 15–20 year period to develop plans for a gradual transfer of administrative powers from France to New Caledonia. A referendum is to be held in 2014 to decide on independence.92

Canada, like Australia, is a settler society. Although Canada was discovered and settled by Europeans well before Australia, there are many similarities in

Australia Decolonizes: Indigenizing Settler Nationalism and the Challenges of Settler/Indigenous Relations," Ethnic and Racial Studies 25.6 (2002). 92 Jocelyn Harewood, Tione Chinula and Vincent Talbot, and New Caledonia (Lonely Planet, 2006), p.207. 32 their histories, with many of the same protagonists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries having an influence. For example, James Cook was in Canada in 1758 and again in 1763,93 Sir visited Labrador and had Sydney Parkinson illustrate some of the specimens gathered on that voyage. Sir John Franklin explored parts of Hudson Bay before being posted to Tasmania. One main difference, however, was that both the French and the British laid claim to parts of the country. Robert Bothwell in Canada and Quebec: one country, two histories,94 writes of the complex history of European discovery and settlement. This will be discussed in greater detail later in the thesis.

Natural history art is a part of the collections of the major public institutions of Canada, mirroring collections held in Australia. Numerous authors have written of that role, including Joan Winearls in ‘Art on the wing: a tale of two collectors, four libraries’, The Halcyon, Henry M. Reeves, François-Marc Gagon and C. Stuart Houston in, ‘‘Codex canadiensis’, an early illustrated manuscript of Canadian natural history’, Archives of Natural History, Ruth B. Phillips, ‘Re-placing Objects: Historical Practices for the Second Museum Age’, The Canadian Historical Review, Lianne McTavish, ‘Learning to see in New Brunswick’, The Canadian Historical Review, and Ross A. Layberry, Peter W. Hall and J. Donald LaFontaine, in ‘The history of butterfly study in Canada’.95 The collecting policies regarding ‘Canadiana’ in the major public

93 John Robson, "The Captain Cook Encyclopaedia," ed. John Robson (Auckland: Random Press New Zealand, 2004), p.51. 94 Robert Bothwell, Canada and Quebec: One Country, Two Histories (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1998). 95 Joan Winearls, "'Art on the Wing': A Tale of Two Collectors, Four Libraries," The Halcyon.22 (1998), Henry M. Reeves, François-Marc Gagon and C. Stuart Houston, ""Codex Canadiensis", an Early Illustrated Manuscript of Canadian Natural History," Archives of Natural History 31.(1) (2004), Ruth B. Phillips, "Re-Placing Objects: Historical Practices for the Second Museum Age," The Canadian Historical Review 86.1 March (2005), Lianne McTavish, "Learning to See in New Brunswick," The Canadian Historical Review.87.4 (2006), Ross A. Layberry, Peter W. Hall and J. Donald LaFontaine, The History of Butterfly Study in Canada, 16/12/2003 1998, Canadian Biodiversity Information Facility, Available: http://www.cbif.gc.ca/spp_pages/butterflies/history_e.php, 28/03/2008. 33 institutions of Canada will be discussed in the case study and compared with those of Australian and Tasmanian institutions.

In Canada, as in Australia, the concepts of national identity and belonging are also being questioned. Landscape, wilderness and the environment are a feature of this questioning with Emily Gilbert, Erin Manning, Ramsay Cook, John E. Crowley and others covering this topic.96

Ethnographic illustration

While this thesis deals with the natural history art within the collections of major cultural institutions, that is, botanical, aquatic and zoological illustration, I feel it is relevant at this point to discuss ethnographic illustration and why it is not included in this examination, although ethnographic illustrations, artefacts and even human remains, are contained in a number of the collections examined for this thesis.

At the time exploratory expeditions studied for this thesis embarked on their voyages of discovery, scientific inquiry was often a major factor considered by the travellers. Plomley writes in The Baudin expedition and the Tasmanian Aborigines, 1802,

It was the Frenchman Charles de Brosses who, in his Histoire des navigations aux Terres Australes (1756), suggested that the navigator should seek fame by adding to scientific knowledge rather than confine himself to commerce and possessions, and in the voyages of discovery which followed, the observation of native

96 See Emily Gilbert, "Beyond Survival? Wilderness and Canadian National Identity into the Twenty-First Century," British Journal of Canadian Studies 21.1 (2009), I. Angus, A Border Within: National Identity, Cultural Plurality, and Wilderness (Montreal: McGill Queens Univercity Press, 1997), Ramsay Cook, Canada, Quebec and the Uses of Nationalism (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Ltd, 1986), Eva Mackey, The House of Difference: Cultures, Politics and National Identity in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002),Erin Manning, Ephemeral Territories: Representing Nation, Home, and Identity in Canada (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003). 34

peoples and the study of natural history became an increasingly important objective of travellers’.97

It can be seen by this statement that the distinction between ‘native peoples and natural history’ had been established well before the expeditions of Cook, D’Entrecasteaux, Flinders and Baudin that feature in this study set sail. When these expeditions embarked, they did so with a set of instructions on the study they were to complete and their conduct in pursuing that research. The research to be carried out by the expeditioners included both the study of natural history and the study of the native peoples encountered. However, the official scientific study of man and his activities was a relatively late concern of the governments. According to Plomley, Cook was the first explorer to officially be asked to investigate the inhabitants of the lands he visited. Cook’s instructions were:

You are likewise to observe the genius, temper, disposition and number of the natives, if there be any, and endeavour by all proper means to cultivate a friendship and alliance with them, making them presents of such trifles as they may value, inviting them to traffick, and shewing them every kind of civility and regard: taking care however not to suffer yourself to be surprised by them, but to be always upon your guard against any accident.98

The French also gave their expeditioners similar instructions. La Pérouse, for example, received instructions to, ‘observe, during any stay in harbour, 'the genius, character, manners, customs, bodily constitution, language, government and number of the inhabitants', 'to conciliate the friendship of the principal chiefs', to 'behave with great gentleness and humanity', and to 'take every precaution' for the safety of his men'’.99

97 N.J.B. Plomley, The Baudin Expedition and the Tasmanian Aborigines, 1802 (Hobart, Tasmania: Blubber Head Press, 1983), p.4. 98 N.J.B. Plomley, The Baudin Expedition and the Tasmanian Aborigines, 1802 (Hobart, Tasmania: Blubber Head Press, 1983), p.6. 99 N.J.B. Plomley, The Baudin Expedition and the Tasmanian Aborigines, 1802 (Hobart, Tasmania: Blubber Head Press, 1983), p.7. 35

Tony Rice, who in his book Voyages of Discovery described as ‘Astonishing images of the natural worlds spanning three centuries of global exploration’, also makes evident the distinction made between natural history and ethnographic illustration when he writes of

the ethnographic collections made by Banks and Figure 6: Sydney Solander during the voyage with Cook: Parkinson, Two of the natives of New Certainly, nothing like the quantity of natural Holland, advancing history and ethnographic material ... would have to combat. been collected in their absence. ... Banks' artists were Alexander Buchan, who was expected to illustrate people and landscapes, and the already well-known Sydney Parkinson (1745–71), who was to draw the plants and animals collected. (Figure 6) 100

Alexander Buchan died early in the expedition, and it was left to Sydney Parkinson to take on the role of ethnographic artist as well as natural history illustrator. The ethnographic illustrations from the voyage appear quite naïve in comparison with the superb botanical illustrations. This can be explained by the different training natural history artists and ethnographic artists would have received. A number of the artists contracted to paint ethnographic illustrations had formal training at the various academies of both France and Britain, and as such were skilled portrait and landscape artists. The training and skills required for natural history art was quite different and was usually completed while working under the guidance of a naturalist. Jean Fornastero et al, Anthony Brown, Tony Rice and others write of the qualifications and training of the artists onboard the expeditions.

Father and son naturalists and artists Johann Reinhold and Georg Forster were onboard Cook’s second voyage to the southern oceans. The Forsters made detailed observations of the natural history and cultures of the islands they visited and made extensive collections of both natural history specimens and

100 Tony Rice, Voyages of Discovery (Crows Nest, New South Wales: Allen and Unwin, 2008). Notes on back cover of the publication. 36 ethnographic artefacts.101 A part of that collection formed a recent exhibition at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra.102

The journals of many of the expedition members contain their interactions with and thoughts about the Indigenous people they met on their voyages. As well as the expeditioners themselves, many others have written in detail since regarding this contact and the disastrous impact it was to have on the Indigenous inhabitants of Tasmania. The art of the ethnographic illustrator and that of the natural history artist have historically been treated as two distinct forms, with many of the early scientific expeditions covered in this thesis employing separate artists for these roles.

In this thesis I investigate the part natural history art, that is, the botanical, aquatic and zoological art, in the collections of major cultural institutions of settler societies play in cementing the sense of belonging members of those societies have to their home.

101 John Robson, "The Captain Cook Encyclopaedia," ed. John Robson (Auckland: Random Press New Zealand, 2004), p.103. 102 See Michelle Hetherington and Howard Morphy, eds., Discovering Cook's Collections, (Canberra: National Museum of Australia Press, 2009), for details of the exhibition. 37

Chapter Two — Europeans discover Tasmania and its natural history

The idea of the exploratory voyage, often lonely and perilous is in one form or another a central and defining metaphor of Romantic Science. The Age of Wonder103

The first recorded European encounters with the unique fauna and flora of Tasmania occurred in the mid-1600s. It was not until the renewed interest in the southern oceans of the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries that voyages of exploration ventured back to the antipodes. This period of exploration coincided with an era Richard Holmes terms the ‘romantic science’, ‘second scientific revolution’, or ‘the age of wonder’.104 Holmes asserts that, ‘ as a cultural force is generally regarded as intensely hostile to science, its ideal of subjectivity opposed to that of scientific objectivity,’ but he suggests, ‘In effect there is Romantic science in the same sense that there is Romantic poetry’.105 Indeed, there was an air of romanticism about the adventurers and the artists who travelled into far-off unknown lands on their, often, perilous voyages of exploration and discovery. These voyages were both of a scientific and of an imperial nature, for the ‘age of wonder’ coincided with an era of great territorial expansion and colonisation.

Unlike the wild and rugged landscapes of the New World, it was the natural history of the antipodes that intrigued, and so baffled, the Europeans at that time. When they reached the southern oceans, the animal wonders of Africa, , and the Americas were comparatively well known and fitted their systems of naming and classifying the natural world. However, the animals

103 Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder (London: Harper Press, 2009), p.xvi. 104 Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder (London: Harper Press, 2009) Holmes defines the Second Science Revolution as dating “roughly, and certainly symbolically, between two celebrated voyages of exploration. These were Captain James Cook’s first round-the-world expedition aboard the Endeavour, begun in 1768, and Charles Darwin’s voyage to the Galapagos Islands aboard the Beagle, begun in 1831, p.xvi. 105 Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder (London: Harper Press, 2009), p.xvi. 38 and plants in Australia and the Pacific islands did not conform to the systems of classification. The fauna and flora the explorers and scientists brought back from their expeditions were sometimes difficult for the European mind to accept or understand,106 being unlike anything seen in the northern hemisphere. Fuller describes some of the first reports of a kangaroo:

The first report came back of an animal that was ‘as large as a greyhound, of a mouse colour and very swift’. Later, the great naturalist Sir Joseph Banks tried to pen a clearer description but found himself at a complete loss, ‘To compare it to any European animal would be impossible as it has not the least resemblance of any one I have seen’.107

Europeans encountering the antipodes had no words to describe the creatures found there. There were no metaphors to convey the idea of the strange beasts they found. This will be discussed further in Chapter Four as others encountered similar difficulty in their attempts to describe the alien environment. They turned to illustration to describe the creatures. However, as it can be seen from some of the earliest drawings, they also encountered difficulty in imaging the unimaginable, the unexplainable.

One of the earliest images of a kangaroo was commissioned by Sir Joseph Banks, and was painted, not from a living specimen, but from a skin that had been brought back from the James Cook voyage (Figure 7). Des Crowley and Brian Hubber note, ‘It can be assumed that Stubbs worked from a stuffed or blown-up skin … The general mutilation of the skin possibly accounts for several mistakes Stubbs made—misrepresenting the kangaroo’s hind feet and making its ears too big’.108

106 Errol Fuller, "Voyage of a Painter," Natural History 107.3 (1998), p.12. 107 Errol Fuller, "Voyage of a Painter," Natural History 107.3 (1998), p.12. 108 Des Cowley and Brian Hubber, "Distinct Creation: Early European Images of Australian Animals," The La Trobe Journal 66 (2000), p.5. 39

An engraving based on Stubbs’s painting appeared in John Hawkesworth’s account of James Cook’s Endeavour expedition, An account of the Voyages undertaken by the order of His present Majesty, for the discoveries in the southern hemisphere,109 published in 1773 (second image of the figure). Whether the engraver had further access to the skin or to the scientists from

the expedition is not known, but, it is curious to note that the hind legs of the kangaroo have now been enlarged to slightly more realistic proportions, although the ears appear unaltered. The third image appears to have been copied from Hawkesworth’s publication, but with a new background. The kangaroo caught the public’s imagination, and soon a number of images based upon Stubbs’ painting began to appear (last image of the figure).

Although the kangaroo itself appears almost the same in

all the images above, the background landscape changes Figure 7: Kangaroo by George Stubbs in each one, ranging from vaguely mountainous to a and after Stubbs. distinctly European forest as seen in the third image of Figure 7. The artists had never seen a living kangaroo, its habit, nor seen the habitat within which it lived. They could not imagine the lands in which these creatures lived, and so created for them a neutral background or a familiar British landscape. This image of the kangaroo ‘proved itself to be a surprisingly resilient creature ... for almost 20 years, it was the only image of a kangaroo in circulation, and even after new information and depictions of the kangaroo emerged out of the English

109 John Hawkesworth, An Account of the Voyages Undertaken by the Order of His Present Majesty, for the Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere, and Successfully Performed by Commodore Byron, Captain Wallis, Captain Carteret, and Captain Cook, in the Dolphin, the Swallow, and the Endeavour: Drawn up from the Journals Which Were Kept by the Several Commanders, and from the Papers of Joseph Banks (Lodon: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1773). 40 settlement at in 1788, Stubbs’s kangaroo more often than not, remained the kangaroo of preference for English publishers’.110

In using and re-using Stubbs’s inaccurate illustration of a kangaroo, the scientists and the public of the metropolitan centre showed that it was not the actual animal or its environment they were interested in. It was the idea of a strange and wondrous creature that intrigued them. It was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century and the work of natural history artists such as Charles-Alexandre Lesueur and Ferdinand Bauer, that new, more accurate scientific images of the Australian animals would gain preference.

In the minds of the artists who accompanied the voyages and in the scientific illustrations of that era, the notion of romantic science Holmes describes, with its sense of both subjectivity and objectivity, is palpable. As Europeans ventured further into hitherto unexplored lands, so the importance of illustration of their finds increased, as the first President of the Linnean Society, Sir , noted:

When a botanist first enters on the investigation of so remote a country as New Holland [Australia], he finds himself as it were in a new world ... The whole tribes of plants, which at first sight seem familiar to his acquaintance, as occupying links in Nature's chain ... prove ... total strangers.111

As Sir James Smith pointed out, the plants might have ‘at first glance seemed familiar’, but which were on closer examination, ‘total strangers’. This demanded a greater expertise from the artists illustrating them. The increased use of microscopes by illustrators led to new, more detailed ways of representing the fauna and flora. The natural history artists were now, like the scientists, looking at specimens at a cellular level. Natural history illustrations were no longer merely attractive drawings of a flower, plant or animal, they became true ‘scientific’ illustrations of the specimen. The role of the artist and

110 Des Cowley and Brian Hubber, "Distinct Creation: Early European Images of Australian Animals," The La Trobe Journal 66 (2000), p.7. 111 Cited in Bernard William Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific, 2nd ed ed. (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1989), p.5. 41 of the illustration had changed and these new images required a new way of interpretation.

In Imagining the Pacific, Bernard Smith expresses the problems associated with the discovery and perception of these completely new forms of plant and animals, by counterposing the words imaging and imagining:

Imaging: in which a person constructs an image in the presence of an object from which the image is fashioned.

Imagining: in which a person constructs an image while not in direct sensory contact with the object or objects from which the imagery of the imagining is constructed.112

The example of the kangaroo illustrations demonstrates the importance of the distinction in the use of these words. Naturalists and the public were confronted with unimagined and unimaginable new creatures and plants through the illustrations of them. Bernard Smith then argues that, ‘a new respect for drawing emerged during the eighteenth century, deriving partly from the increased recognition of their value as records, and partly from a related development in the appreciation of a good drawing as a work of art in its own right’.113

That these images are now regarded as works of art is evident through their inclusion in the collections of museums and art galleries today. The Natural History Museum in London, for example, has many images of Australian fauna and flora in their collections, including exquisite sketches by George Raper, Thomas Watling, Sydney Parkinson, Ferdinand Bauer, John and Elizabeth Gould and others. Examples of Ferdinand Bauer’s work are also held at the Natural History Museum in Vienna. The Natural History Museum has

112 Bernard William Smith, Imagining the Pacific: In the Wake of the Cook Voyages (Carlton, Vic: Melbourne University Press at the Miegunyah Press, 1992), p.ix. 113 Bernard William Smith, Imagining the Pacific: In the Wake of the Cook Voyages (Carlton, Vic: Melbourne University Press at the Miegunyah Press, 1992), p.ix. 42 published many books containing examples from their collections.114 In France, the Muséum du Havre has the Charles-Alexandre Lesueur drawings from Nicolas Baudin’s voyage to Tasmania, the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris contains Piron’s drawings from the d’Entrecasteaux expedition.

However, the illustrations, particularly those of the nineteenth century, when artists worked with scientists, were created to be an accurate depiction of the specimen being drawn. They were factual images first and foremost, meant only for the scientists and perhaps for a lithographer or engraver as reference material. That they are now considered to be works of art is a testament to skills of the artists in presenting the facts in a manner that goes beyond merely representing the specimen in a scientifically accurate approach, but also in an aesthetically pleasing form.

Museum and library collections in Tasmania contain many examples of the exquisite natural history illustrations dating from this era of romantic science of the early voyages of exploration of the region, illustrations that predate European settlement of the island in 1803. The drawings include many that were created by explorers from nations other than those of the eventual colonisers of the island—the British. Of particular note are illustrations from the French scientific expeditions of Bruni D’Entrecasteaux and Nicolas Baudin and those from the British expeditions, including those commanded by James Cook and Matthew Flinders.

The Royal Society of Tasmania’s library collection contains an astonishing number of publications—approximately one thousand—relating to the early exploration of Australia and Tasmania, far too many to name individually. The collection includes such rare books as; John White’s Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales: With Sixty-Five Plates of Non Descript Animals, Birds, Lizards, Serpents, Curious Cones of Trees and Other Natural Productions, Jacques Julien Houton de Labillardière’s Novae Hollandiae Plantarum

114 See Jonathan Elphick, Birds: The Art of Ornithology (London: Scriptum Editions, 2008), Tony Rice, Voyages of Discovery (Crows Nest, New South Wales: Allen and Unwin, 2008). 43

Specimen, and Relation Du Voyage À La Recherche De La Pérouse:Fait Par Ordre De L'assemblée Constituante, Pendant Les Années 1791, 1792. Et Pendant La 1ère. Et La 2ce. Année De La République Françoise. Par Le Cen Labillardière. Correspondant De L'academie Des Sciences De Paris, Membre De La Societe D'histoire Naturelle, Et L'un Des Naturalistes De L'expedition, and a number of publications by Antoine de Bruni d’Entrecasteaux, François Péron and Charles-Alexandre Lesueur. Also included in the collection are John Gould’s Birds of Australia and The Mammals of Australia.115

The Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts also has a magnificent collection of early illustrated books and also natural history illustrations relating to Tasmania’s exploration and early settlement. The collection contains a number of the same books as are in The Royal Society collection, for example, Relation Du Voyage À La Recherche De La Pérouse / Fait Par Ordre De L'assemblée Constituante, Pendant Les Années 1791, 1792. Et Pendant La 1ère. Et La 2ce. Année De La République Françoise. Par Le Cen Labillardière. Correspondant De L'academie Des Sciences De Paris, Membre De La Societe D'histoire Naturelle, Et L'un Des Naturalistes De L'expedition. However, the Allport collection differs in that it also contains an extensive portfolio of natural history illustrations, including works by Mary Morton Allport, Louisa Anne Meredith, and twelve exquisite botanical drawings and by the convict artist William Buelow Gould, and, of course, the famous Sketchbook of Fishes. The Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery also has a large collection of William Buelow Gould’s botanical drawings. The

115 John White, Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales: With Sixty-Five Plates of Non Descript Animals, Birds, Lizards, Serpents, Curious Cones of Trees and Other Natural Productions (London: J. Debrett, 1757), Jacques Julien Houton de Labillardiere, Novae Hollandiae Plantarum Specimen (Parisiis: Huzard, 1804 ), Jacques-Julien Houtou de La Billardière, Relation Du Voyage À La Recherche De La Pérouse / Fait Par Ordre De L'assemblée Constituante, Pendant Les Années 1791, 1792. Et Pendant La 1ère. Et La 2ce. Année De La République Françoise. Par Le Cen Labillardière. Correspondant De L'academie Des Sciences De Paris, Membre De La Societe D'histoire Naturelle, Et L'un Des Naturalistes De L'expedition (Paris: Chex H.J. Jansen, 1800), John Gould, Birds of Australia (London: Printed by Richard and John E. Taylor, published by the author, 1848– 1869), John Gould, The Mammals of Australia (London: the author, 1863). 44

Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) has a collection of 33 botanical illustrations by the Tasmanian-born botanist William Archer. Another 36 of Archer’s illustrations are held at the Linnean Society of London. Most of the Archer illustrations in the TMAG and Linnean Society collections were used in JD Hooker’s Flora Tasmaniae, part of The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of H. M. Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror in the Years 1839–1843, under the Command of Captain Sir James Clark Ross series.116

The natural history illustrations from the expeditions of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were the result of growing scientific enquiry in the Age of Enlightenment. The illustrations are sometimes perceived as little more than plates in research journals, the results of scientific inquiry rather than as artworks in their own right. However, while they might appear benign drawings of plants and animals, they were also tangible representations and declarations of Empire. Aitkin asserts, ‘Capturing a country’s flora between the pages of a book was a powerful expression of control’.117 Patrick Filmer Sankey in Flowers of Tasmania: Botanical Drawings of Margaret Stones and William Buelow Gould, maintains that the floral images of a country’s flora taken abroad as botanical specimens, contain their spirit.118

It is therefore not surprising that the zoological and specimens collected on these expeditions became, at times, political tools and even spoils of war. Jacques-Julien Houtou de Labillardière’s collections and their use as spoils of war will be discussed later in this chapter. The collecting, and more importantly, the possession of the collections were later also a powerful means of control; of power and of information, by the metropolitan centre over the colonial collectors and scientists.

116 Joseph Dalton Hooker, The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of H. M. Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror in the Years 1839–1843, under the Command of Captain Sir James Clark Ross: Ii: Flora Novae-Zelandiae, 2 v. : illus. vols. (London: Lovell Reeve, 1845). 117 Richard Aitken, Botanical Riches: Stories of Botanical Exploration, ed. Clare Coney (Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2006), p.xvi. 118 Patrick Filmer Sankey, "Introduction," Flowers of Tasmania: Botanical Drawings of Margaret Stones and William Buelow Gould (Launceston: Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, 2007). 45

Is the reappropriation of illustrations and illustrated volumes by members of the settler society who live in the lands represented by these images, an attempt to wrest back control over an important aspect of their new homeland; to return the spirit of the lost flora home as Sankey119 suggests? This question seems to be especially significant in Tasmania, where the environment and wilderness are considered to be influential in the sense of belonging, of identity.

Before going to the periphery

Natural history collections and publications before the seventeenth century, before Europeans first encountered Terra Australis, before the age of Enlightenment and the second scientific revolution, were primarily herbals that Figure 8: Rhinoceros, Conrad described the medicinal properties of plants, or bestiaries Gessner. illustrating the attributes given to animals. They were a mixture of the real and the imaginary. Conrad Gessner’s (1516–65) Historiae animalium120 was amongst the first of these books to use somewhat life-like illustrations Figure 9: Whale with calf. (Figure 8). Although Gessner was amongst the first to make use of life-like illustrations, he also included drawings of animals that could at best be described as mythological (Figure 9). Pierre Belon (1517– 1564) and Guillaume Rondelet (1507–1566) also used personal observations/illustrations 'drawn from life' in their publications, but the style of Gessner’s and Ulisse Aldrovandi’s (1522–1605) work on natural history,121 proved to be the more popular. It is also worthy of note that nearly all information at this time was gathered from reading other texts; no original interpretation or fieldwork was carried out in the gathering of information.

119 Patrick Filmer Sankey, "Introduction," Flowers of Tasmania: Botanical Drawings of Margaret Stones and William Buelow Gould (Launceston: Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, 2007). 120 Conrad Gessner, Historiae Animalium (Zurich: 1551). 121 William B. jr Ashworth, "Emblematic Natural History of the Renaissance," Cultures of Natural History, eds. N. Jardine, J.A. Secord and E.C. Spary (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996) pp.30 and 33. 46

There was no personal involvement or connection with the fauna and flora that was being illustrated and described. It did not matter if the creatures illustrated were real or mythological. It was not until the later age of wonder that the scientific accuracy of the natural history publications was seen as important.

Helen Hewson points out that, ‘In natural history, old observations and images had been hand-copied for centuries’.122 It was also generally believed by scholars that the old masters already possessed all knowledge of the world’s natural history, that there was nothing new to be learned. This way of thinking changed with the introduction of advanced boat building techniques that enabled long-distance travel, leading to a rapid increase in maritime exploration beginning in the sixteenth century.123 This era of exploration led to the discovery of new lands, new peoples and new fauna and flora.

As the era of exploration continued, discoveries of new lands, particularly those of the southern oceans, led to a plethora of previously unimagined, and unimaginable, plants and animals being brought back to the European centre. Reusing the old woodcuts to illustrate newly found fauna and flora was no longer a realistic option. New illustrations were needed. At the same time as the new fauna and flora was being scientifically analysed, advances in printing techniques and the use of the more affordable methods of etching and engraving as the means of reproducing illustrations, enabled the production of new images for the scientific reports from these expeditions. The more affordable reproduction led to more publications being printed and a wider audience for the illustrations.

An interest in collecting the novel curiosities emerged within the aristocracy as the discovery of new lands, particularly the Americas in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, brought with it new artefacts that could be added to their cabinets of curiosities. The collecting of natural history artefacts is therefore

122 Helen Hewson, Australia: 300 Years of Botanical Illustration (Collingwood, Vic: CSIRO Publishing, 1999), p.1. 123 Richard Aitken, Botanical Riches: Stories of Botanical Exploration, ed. Clare Coney (Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2006), p.65. 47 intrinsically linked with the acquisition of empire. As the availability of new curiosities began to grow, so too did the number of people able to amass their own collections. Ken Arnold writes, ‘It was no longer purely the province of kings, and soon the lesser nobility and even the newly emerging wealthy traders and middle-classes of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries became collectors. It was within this group that the figure of the virtuoso—the gentleman cum scholar—came to play an increasingly important role in the world of collecting. This change in the dominant social context for collecting represented the most significant influence of the war [English Civil War] upon the world of Museums’.124 The role of the natural history curiosities changed with that of the virtuoso—the objects were now valued for reasons other than their uniqueness. The metropolitan collectors could marvel at the wonders of their empire. The collections demonstrated the strangeness of the ‘other’, so unlike their own centre.

However, as the number and size of the private collections grew, so too did their value, not only in a monetary sense, but also in their value to science. The fact that these diverse collections now provided a global context for understanding the relationship of the world’s plants and animals that had never before been possible. In the period shortly before the British discovery and subsequent settlement of Australia, a radical shift in the perception of natural history collections as private possessions occurred when the naturalist Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753) bequeathed his outstanding collection of books, engravings and natural history specimens, to the British nation in 1753. In 1759 the British Museum opened to the public, with Sloane’s collection as the core of its exhibits.125 Later, in 1881, a significant proportion of the collection became the foundation for the Natural History Museum. This concept of

124 Ken Arnold, Cabinets for the Curious: Looking Back at Early English Museums, Perspectives on Collecting, ed. Susan Pearce (Aldershot, Hants, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006), p.21, Janet Minihan, The Nationalization of Culture: The Development of State Subsidies to the Arts in Great Britain (New York: New York University Press, 1977). 125 Ken Arnold, Cabinets for the Curious: Looking Back at Early English Museums, Perspectives on Collecting, ed. Susan Pearce (Aldershot, Hants, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006), p.21. 48 philanthropy, as exemplified by the Sloane bequest, would later play an important role in the establishing of museums, libraries and art galleries in Tasmania: the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery had its origins in the natural history collections of The Royal Society of Tasmania; the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery had its origins in the Launceston Mechanics Institute; and the State Library of Tasmania has a number of donated collections in its catalogue, most notably the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, the Crowther Collection and the William Walker Collection.

The collections in the museums, and the specimens being brought back by the explorers, provided scientists with the opportunity to examine specimens in numbers not previously available, and as Lys De Bray suggests, ‘It was then the real botanists among the authors were, of course, impossibly hampered by the problem of nomenclature’.126 Old systems, using local names, no longer sufficed and the search for a systematic approach to the problem began. A number of new methods were explored, most notable of which were by Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656–1708) and (1628–1705),127 but it was 's (1707–1778) binomial nomenclature for the divisions of fauna (a term he coined, alongside flora)128 that proved most influential. Linnaeus’s system was simple; every species must be given a two-part name. But, as Carol Yoon so rightly points out, ‘Others had used two-part names before him, but it was Linnaeus who instituted this as a hard and fast rule. The name—known as the scientific name, or Latin binomial—had as its first part a genus to which the species belonged, and as the second part, a label that defined the species uniquely within the genus’.129 Linnaeus also established the Linnaean

126 Lys De Bray, The Art of Botanical Illustration: A History of the Classic Illustrators and Their Achievements (Royston [England] Eagle Editions, 2001), p.36. 127 Lys De Bray, The Art of Botanical Illustration: A History of the Classic Illustrators and Their Achievements (Royston [England] Eagle Editions, 2001), p.66. 128 Lisbeth Koerner, "Carl Linnaeus in His Time and Place," Cultures of Natural History, eds. N. Jardine, J.A. Secord and E.C. Spary (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p.147. 129 Carol Kaesuk Yoon, Naming Nature: The Clash between Instinct and Science (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2010), p.44. 49

Hierarchy (Table 1) still in use today. The great advantage of this system was that it allowed every newly discovered species to be included and named. The simplicity and expediency of Linnaeus’s system led to its widespread acceptance and use. By the 1760s, in Britain and across Europe, local floras, botanic plate publications, natural histories of foreign countries, and even species monographs and children's books, were all using a Linnaean vocabulary. Linnaeus was a household word among the educated public, and a fashion spread across Europe for botany to be accessible to lay-people.130 Not only did Linnaeus’s system make botany accessible to lay-people, it also enabled lay-people to participate in scientific research. It was now not just for the educated few—not only the ‘disinterested gentleman scholar’.

Table 1: Linnaean Hierarchy Linnaean Hierarchy (example for Homo sapiens)131 Kingdom Animalia (animals) Phylum Chordata (Vertebrates and kin) Class Mammalia (Mammals) Order Primates (Primates) Family Hominidae (Homides) Genus Homo (Homo) Species sapiens (Ourselves)

Where the first exploratory expeditions to Australia had self-funded naturalists, the ‘disinterested gentleman scholars’, such as Sir Joseph Banks and Charles Darwin onboard, in the nineteenth century most expeditions had commissioned naturalists and artists aboard, indeed many voyages were also seen as scientific expeditions. One reason for this was that the strategic value of the natural history artefacts and art was recognised, and the significance of natural history artefacts had changed from being valued purely as objects of curiosity, to the

130 Lisbeth Koerner, "Carl Linnaeus in His Time and Place," Cultures of Natural History, eds. N. Jardine, J.A. Secord and E.C. Spary (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p.154. 131 Carol Kaesuk Yoon, Naming Nature: The Clash between Instinct and Science (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2010), p.45. 50 more diverse role of scientific and strategic importance. Of course trade, and in particular spices, had always been of great commercial value, and it was the search for new spices or new trade routes that instigated many voyages of exploration before the second scientific revolution. But it was the growing scientific research that led to new ways of looking at the world and the plants and animals within it. The discovery of the new southern lands enabled the emerging specialist naturalists to examine the enormous mass of specimens collected by the expeditioners on a global scale for the first time. This move from collecting objects as singular items of interest to one where the collections began to construct a picture of each new place through a systematised expression of the world’s natural history. A place was no longer valued solely for the uniqueness of its objects, but was considered in terms of the interrelationship of things. This was the first step in the journey to emplacement, of belonging. This was especially relevant to Tasmania and other places of the southern oceans with their unique natural history that so confronted the contemporary thinking on the natural order of things.

Exploring the periphery

Marc-Joseph Marion Dufresne (1724–1772) commanded the first French expedition to reach Tasmania, arriving in March 1772, however the ‘natural natural history observations of his expedition were unsystematic and amateurish’.132 In the following year, 1773, Tobias Furneaux (1735–1781), second-in-command on James Cook’s second Australian voyage133 became the first British explorer to land in Tasmania, when he anchored the Adventure off the east coast of Bruny Island at Adventure Bay.134 The natural history

132 Edward Duyker, The Discovery of Tasmania: Journal Extracts from the Expeditions of Abel Janszoon Tasman and Marc-Joseph Marion Dufresne 1642–1772, trans. Edward Duyker, Herman Duyker and Maryse Duyker (Hobart: St David's Park Publishing, 1992), p.4. 133 Unfortunately, Cook did not visit Tasmania on his voyage to the Pacific when the famous botanical artist Sydney Parkinson (c1745–71) was the official artist. 134 Roslynn Haynes, Tasmanian Visions: Landscapes in Writing, Art and Photography (Sandy Bay, Tas: Polymath Press, 2006), p.9. 51

observations from this expedition were more methodical, and the removal of specimens to the metropolitan centre in Europe began.

The official naturalist on Cook’s expedition, Johann Reinhold Forster (1729–1798) and his natural history

artist son Johann Georg Adam Forster (1754–1794), were Figure 10: Grey onboard Cook’s Resolution, which did not visit Tasmania Goshawk (Accipiter on that expedition. Furneaux did, however, collect some novae hollandiae) by specimens for them while in Tasmania. Penny Olsen Georg Forster. recorded that, ‘seamen shot a large, white kite of the eagle kind, the Grey Goshawk … The specimens were taken to New Zealand, where the two ships reunited, to be described and drawn by the younger Forster’.135 The illustration of Accipitir novae hollandiae (Figure 10) is of the specimen shot by sailors while at Adventure Bay, and while only an incomplete pencil drawing, it is significant because it is the first illustration of this Tasmanian species.

Why did Furneaux bring the specimen with him to New Zealand? Being the first to describe and illustrate a new plant or animal became vitally important for the naturalists and artists. Under the Linnean system, being the first gave one the right to name the species. As Penny Olsen notes:

The basic principle of the system is priority. In general, the first scientific name given to an animal since 1758, the accepted starting date of the Linnaean system, takes precedence. The specimen on which the first description is based is known as the ‘type’. The type specimen is usually a museum skin but may be an illustration, particularly for species discovered in the period before preservation’. 136

135 Penny Olsen, Feather and Brush: Three Centuries of Australian Bird Art (Collingwood: CSIRO Publishing, c2001), p.15. 136 Penny Olsen, Feather and Brush: Three Centuries of Australian Bird Art (Collingwood: CSIRO Publishing, c2001), p.12. 52

By taking a species classifying, naming and illustrating it, the metropolis appropriated the species as their own.

The importance of being the first to publish can be seen from the different experiences of the naturalists on James Cook’s first two voyages to the new lands of the southern oceans. Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820) made his reputation as a naturalist on the diversity and number of his collections from the first expedition. Cook’s experience with the naturalists on this second expedition was less favourable, and this led to the enforcement of Johann Forster’s contractual restriction preventing him from publishing his account of the expedition before Cook did. As Penny Olsen notes, ‘Later, Forster prepared a manuscript detailing his natural history studies with Cook. Unfortunately, he died and it lay unpublished until 1844, by which time others had already published scientific descriptions of most of the species, depriving Forster of that honour’.137 In a technicality, the restriction did not apply to Georg Forster, who published his account some two months before Cook thereby having precedence in publishing the novel fauna and flora found on the expedition. Georg Forster’s A voyage round the world in His Britannic Majesty's sloop, Resolution, commanded by Capt. James Cook, during the years 1772, 3, 4, and 5 (1777),138 is represented in the State Library of Tasmania’s collections, as are a number of publications by Johann Forster.

If, as Aiken asserts, ‘Capturing a country’s flora between the pages of a book was a powerful expression of control,’139 then the collecting and naming of type specimens of animal species must also be ‘a powerful expression of control’. It was therefore essential to collect as many new species as possible on an expedition. Not only were the specimen collections an expression of

137 Penny Olsen, Feather and Brush: Three Centuries of Australian Bird Art (Collingwood: CSIRO Publishing, c2001), p.15. 138 Georg Forster, A Voyage Round the World in His Britannic Majesty's Sloop Resolution, Commanded by Capt. James Cook, During the Years, 1772, 3, 4 and 5 (London: White, 1777). 139 Richard Aitken, Botanical Riches: Stories of Botanical Exploration, ed. Clare Coney (Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2006), p.xvi. 53 control of the newly discovered lands by governments, they were vitally important to the scientists who collected them. Reputations were made in the research, illustration and publication of new species, it was therefore imperative to be the first to publish. A sense of entitlement existed whereby some botanists believed they had the sole right to classify and name a species. This would later become a contentious issue between the metropolitan and colonial scientists as the sense of belonging grew among the settlers.

Out place, out of context

Like the Forsters, the artists on the early expeditions of exploration were often specifically employed for the task; either privately as in the case of Sydney Parkinson, who was employed by Sir Joseph Banks, or as enlisted men, for example Charles-Alexandre Lesueur140 on the French expedition (1800–1804) commanded by Nicholas Baudin. They were usually under the instruction of the Figure 11: Eucalyptus obliqua naturalists onboard. Ownership of their work was in the L’Hér. hands of their employers (the collectors) or their government. The specimens and initial sketches were returned to the metropolitan centres of learning in London and Paris for classification and publishing—out of context and out of place.

These artists also often used the classic style of scientific illustration, that of showing the specimen only, against a plain white background, isolated on the page, that ensures that the specimen depicted is out of context. There is no indication within the illustration of where, or when, the specimen was collected or its habit.141 The ‘upside-down’ illustration of Eucalyptus obliqua (Figure 11) demonstrates this isolation.

140 Charles-Alexandre Lesueur was recruited, not as an artist, but as a gunner to the expedition. His eventual role as artist for the expedition will be discussed in detail later. 141 It is true that the season some botanical specimens were collected can be ascertained if the flowering season is known, however, many illustrations show the specimen through all seasons, that is, they will show flowers and fruit within the same illustration. 54

This illustration is the first published drawing of an Australian plant by the famous French botanical artist Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759–1840).142 Despite its apparent lack of context, of place, this illustration is of particular significance to Tasmania and worthy of its inclusion in the state’s collections. The specimen upon which this illustration is based upon was collected in Tasmania. As Helen Hewson notes regarding Captain James Cook’s third Australian expedition:

On the way to the Pacific Discovery anchored for four days in Adventure Bay, Van Diemen’s Land, late in January 1777. The natural history legacy from this stopover does not seem to have been particularly significant, with one notable exception. William Anderson, together with a midshipman, David Nelson,143 made a collection of Eucalyptus obliqua which was later to become the type species of the genus Eucalyptus’.144

The illustration, engraved by François Hubert, was published in Paris in C. L. L’Héritier’s, Sertum Anglicum, seu plante rariores quas in hortis juxta Londinum (1779–1792).145 The State Library of Tasmania purchased a copy of this publication in 2007. Collecting the published illustrations of this first specimen is important for Tasmanian cultural institutions in their quest for reappropriation of material deemed significant in the State’s history.

Who was this French artist who came to illustrate a Tasmanian specimen collected by a British expedition?

142 Helen Hewson, Australia: 300 Years of Botanical Illustration (Collingwood, Vic: CSIRO Publishing, 1999), p.32. 143 Richard Aitken notes that Nelson was a trained gardener. Richard Aitken, Botanical Riches: Stories of Botanical Exploration, ed. Clare Coney (Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2006), p.151. 144 Helen Hewson, Australia: 300 Years of Botanical Illustration (Collingwood, Vic: CSIRO Publishing, 1999), pp.29–30. 145 Charles Louis L'Heritier de Brutelle, Sertum Anglicum, Seu Plantae Rariores Quae in Hortis Juxta Londinum, Imprimis in Horto Regio Kewensi Excoluntur, Ab Anno 1786 Ad Annum 1787 Observatae (Parisis: Petri-Francisci Didot, 1788). 55

Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759–1840) was born into a family of artists at St Hubert in the Ardennes.146 In 1786 the French naturalist Charles-Louis L’Héritier de Brutelle (1746–1800) sailed to England to work at ,147 and on his return in 1788, L’Héritier asked Pierre-Joseph Redouté to accompany him to England to illustrate the fascinating new flora from Australia. Redouté was to produce twenty-two illustrations of plants for this book, Sertum Anglicum.148

Redouté was also asked to illustrate the specimens collected in Tasmania by Jacques Julien Houtou de Labillardière (1755–1834) who is regarded as the most significant botanist to describe Tasmanian flora, although it could be argued Joseph Dalton Hooker’s (1817–1911) work is comparable.149 Labillardière was the official botanist onboard the Joseph-Antoine de Bruni Chevalier d’Entrecasteaux (1740–1793) expedition of 1791–1793 in search of La Pérouse.150 The expedition anchored at Recherche Bay on Bruny Island off the coast of Tasmania in January and February 1792 for five weeks. They

146 In his youth, Redouté worked as an interior decorator. In 1782, he moved to Paris where his older brother Henri Joseph Redouté already lived. It was there that he started his botanical interests, painting at the Jardin du Roi. His interest in botanical illustration led him to study the art with the famous botanical illustrator Gérard van Spaëndonck (1746– 1822), which also brought him to the attention of the amateur botanist Charles-Louis L’Héritier de Brutelle who taught him botany. 147 L’Héritier travelled to England with specimens collected by the French botanist Joseph Dombey in Chile. Dombey’s expedition had been funded by the Spanish government. Fearing the specimens would be claimed by Spain, L’Héritier approached Joseph Banks with the specimens for safekeeping. See Lys De Bray, The Art of Botanical Illustration: A History of the Classic Illustrators and Their Achievements (Royston [England] Eagle Editions, 2001), for more information on this. 148 While in England Redouté studied with master engraver Francesco Bartolozzi, who taught him the art of stipple engraving, which was more suited to reproducing his delicate watercolour illustrations than the traditional line engravings more commonly used at the time. 149 Joseph Dalton Hooker’s contribution to the study of Tasmanian flora, especially Flora Tasmaniae is discussed in Chapter 6 of this thesis. 150 La Pérouse set sail on a scientific expedition in 1785, but he had not been heard from for some years. D’Entrecasteaux’s expedition failed to find any sign of the La Pérouse expedition. Some remains from the expedition were eventually found at Santa Cruz in 1826, finally solving the mystery of his disappearance. 56 revisited the island the following year, again during January to February and collected over 5000 specimens, comprising 30 genera and about 100 new species.151 For the scientists and artists onboard the expedition, the abundance of new and undescribed species must have seemed almost overwhelming. D’Entrecasteaux wrote, ‘The naturalists have gathered precious harvests among all species—several new plants, unknown fish, birds which had not been previously described, others which showed no differentiation from the species of neighbouring countries but offered very curious variations’.152

Possessing such a wealth of new, undescribed species would enable Labillardière to make his name as a naturalist on his return to the metropolitan centre to classify, name and publish his research. Collecting such huge quantities of specimens proved problematic at times during the voyage. The ships were not very large and conditions cramped at the best of times and the added crowding caused by the boxes of specimens made Labillardière unpopular with the crew.

The expedition returned to Tasmania in January 1792. Edward Duyker notes Louis Ventenat’s (1765–1798, naturalist) comments on the benefits of returning to the island, ‘This year we found all the plants in flower which we had seen in fruit the previous year’.153 The expedition then headed to New Caledonia.154 In February 1794, they stopped at Surabaya, Java, on their return voyage. Seven officers and naturalists from the expedition, including Labillardière and the artist Piron (as there is still some dispute as to Piron’s

151 See Edward Duyker, Citizen Labillardière: A Naturalist's Life in Revolution and Exploration (1755–1834) (Carlton, Vic.: Miegunyah Press, 2003), Helen Hewson, Australia: 300 Years of Botanical Illustration (Collingwood, Vic: CSIRO Publishing, 1999), and Richard Aitken, Botanical Riches: Stories of Botanical Exploration, ed. Clare Coney (Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2006). 152 Bruny d’Entrecasteaux, in Edward Duyker, Citizen Labillardière: A Naturalist's Life in Revolution and Exploration (1755–1834) (Carlton, Vic.: Miegunyah Press, 2003), p.101. 153 Edward Duyker, Citizen Labillardière: A Naturalist's Life in Revolution and Exploration (1755–1834) (Carlton, Vic.: Miegunyah Press, 2003), p.140. 154 Later in this thesis I will discuss the collections of natural history art associated with this visit to New Caledonia. 57 identity, and therefore his first name among scholars, I will refer to him simply as Piron throughout this thesis.155 ) were placed under arrest. Their natural history collections were confiscated as spoils of war. Félix Lahaie (1767– 1829), gardener on the expedition managed to bring the living and dried specimens back to Europe, with the herbarium collection going to the British Museum, London.156

In confiscating Labillardière’s specimens and Piron’s sketches the British government acknowledged the strategic value of the natural history of newly explored lands. Although the expeditioners were ostensibly scientific in nature, the imperial motives behind them cannot be denied. The natural history collections amassed during these expeditions were more than plant and animal specimens, ‘the collection endows the collector with all sorts of authority, intellectual and aesthetic ... collectors gain power through their collections’.157 Labillardière needed to regain control of his collection.

After his release in 1796, Labillardière sent a letter to Sir Joseph Banks pleading for the return of his specimens. As Edward Duyker writes, ‘on his arrival in Paris in November 1796 Labillardière had the great satisfaction of learning that his collections had been returned by the British and were waiting

155 While Hewson names the artist as Nicolas Piron, Edward Duyker makes the claim that he could be one of two brothers, either Jean Hubert Piron (1767), or Jean Joseph Piron (1771). As Piron joined d’Entrecastreaux’s expedition at the recommendation of Redouté—who was from the same birthplace in Belgium—it seems likely he could have been one of these brothers. Piron did not return to France after the capture and imprisonment of the expeditioners in Surabaya in what is now Indonesia. He was eventually released, and moved to Manila in the Phillipines, but then no further records of his movements have been found. Piron’s sketches at the Musée de l’Homme bear no forename. Indeed, in 1992, the New Zealand scholar Roger Collins wrote with frustration, ‘All efforts to discern the origins of Piron are confirmed vain. Of his family, of his country of origin, even his forename, we know nothing.” Edward Duyker, "In Search of Jean Piron," National Library of Australia News XVI.6 (2006). 156 Helen Hewson, Australia: 300 Years of Botanical Illustration (Collingwood, Vic: CSIRO Publishing, 1999), p.56. 157 Keith Stewart Thomson, Treasures on Earth: Museums, Collections and Paradoxes (London: Faber and Faber, 2002), p.31. 58

for him at the Jardine des Plantes’.158 In 1799, Labillardière published the results of his research on the specimen collection in Relation du voyage a la recherché de la Pérouse (1799), which is regarded as the first Australian flora. He later published further work from the expedition in Novae Hollandiae plantarum Figure 12: JP Redouté illustration specimen (1804–1806). Edward Dyker notes, ‘With an from English version atlas of impressive engravings based on Piron’s sketches, of Labillardiére's book. but also of illustrations of plants by the great Pierre- Joseph Redouté (Figure 12) and of birds by Jean-Baptiste Audebert. Labillardière’s Relation proved to be an international best-seller. There were several French editions, and in 1817 the Atlas was reprinted. Four English editions quickly appeared between 1800 and 1802’.159

D’Entrecasteaux’s expedition, while initiated to investigate the fate of the La Pérouse expedition, was also a scientific venture. On-board were a number of scientists, including, of course Labillardière, but there were also two artists Chailly-Ely160 and Piron.

158 Edward Duyker, Citizen Labillardière: A Naturalist's Life in Revolution and Exploration (1755–1834) (Carlton, Vic.: Miegunyah Press, 2003), p.223. 159 Edward Duyker, Citizen Labillardière: A Naturalist's Life in Revolution and Exploration (1755–1834) (Carlton, Vic.: Miegunyah Press, 2003), p.226. 160 Chailly-Ely left the expedition at the before it reached Australian shores therefore there are no illustrations of Australian flora or fauna by him. 59

Although Piron never returned to Europe, 15 engraved plates based on his illustrations appear in Labillardière’s publications of the voyage. There are 27 of his sketches known to exist, although the majority of these are Figure 13: Black landscapes or ethnographic illustrations. These Swan by Piron. drawings were, until recently, held at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris but they have been transferred to Musée du Quai Branly in Paris.161 It would seem reasonable to assume that these illustrations were bundled with Labillardière’s herbarium and specimen collection that was sent to England after the expeditioners’ imprisonment in Surabaya. The illustration of the Black Swan of Tasmania (Figure 13) appears in Labillardière’s Relation du voyage a la recherché de la Pérouse, as such it would be one of the earliest illustrations of a Tasmanian bird.

The etching by Jacques Louis Peree (b.1769), based on Piron’s drawing, features the swan swimming, but shows no background to indicate its habitat. The swan has a life-like appearance, indicating that Piron most probably studied the living birds and did not draw solely from a dead specimen or skin, he is likely to have used his knowledge of the European swan to prepare the drawing.

Relation du voyage a la recherché de la Pérouse also contains a number of etchings by Peree based on illustrations by Jean-Baptiste Audebert. Audebert used

Labillardière’s ornithological collection for his Figure 14: Tasmanian parrot by models.162 The illustration of a Tasmanian parrot (Figure Audebert. 14) is an example.

161 Bronwen Douglas, In the Event: Indigenous Encountsigns and the Ethnohistory of Voyaging, ed. Darrell Tryon (Canberra: Tha Australian National University, 2009), 7 January 2013 . 162 Edward Duyker, Citizen Labillardière: A Naturalist's Life in Revolution and Exploration (1755–1834) (Carlton, Vic.: Miegunyah Press, 2003), pp.226 and 297. 60

Audebret clearly drew his parrot using a dead specimen or skin, as he had never seen the living bird. Audebret’s illustration appears flat and wooden, and has none of the grace of the etching of the swan based upon Piron’s painting. This was still the very early era of European exploration of the southern oceans, and as yet, very few artists had ventured into the area to draw the flora and fauna from life. Of those that had, even fewer had survived to return to Britain or France to complete their illustrations: both Sydney Parkinson and John Buchan on Cook’s voyage died before the voyage was completed, Piron never returned after his imprisonment in Asia, and Johann Forster had displeased Cook to the extent he was unable to publish his research.

Therefore, the botanical illustrations of Sertum Anglicum, Relation du voyage a la recherche de la Pérouse, and Novae Hollandiae plantarum specimen, whilst among the earliest illustrative examples of Tasmanian flora, were created, on the whole by artists who had never seen the living plants themselves, or if they had, the plants they drew were specimens planted in the English or French gardens of Kew in London or in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. Indeed, the plates in Sertum Anglicum, published in 1789–1792, were based on specimens collected on Cook’s second expedition, more than ten years before being illustrated.

Of the illustrations in Novae Hollandiae plantarum specimen Helen Hewson notes, ‘The combination of the engraver Plée with the artists Poiteau, Turpin and Redouté exemplifies great craftsmanship in botanical illustration. Nevertheless some of the work is flat Figure 15: Correa reflexa indicating that the drawings were taken from herbarium (Mazeutoxeron specimens: others have great depth and surely were reflexum). Pierre- 163 Joseph Redouté. taken from living material’. Figure 15 of Correa reflexa (named Mazeutoxeron reflexum by Labillardière),

163 Helen Hewson, Australia: 300 Years of Botanical Illustration (Collingwood, Vic: CSIRO Publishing, 1999), p.58. 61

having been drawn from a herbarium specimen, does not illustrate the opposite decussate architecture of the leaves and stems that is typical of this plant and hence displays the flatness Hewson describes. The specimen for the illustration was collected by Labillardière at Adventure Bay and is the type specimen for the species.

Another indication of the drawbacks associated with

illustrations having been drawn from herbarium Figure 16: specimens only, is exemplified by the ‘upside-down’ Eucalyptus obliqua. illustration of Eucalyptus obliqua by Redouté mentioned previously. Never having seen the living plant or its environment, Redouté has drawn a specimen that appears to have soft, delicate flowing leaves. He does not show the tough leathery leaves typical of this Australian eucalypt, an adaptation to the harsh, dry conditions. Nor does he indicate the characteristic downward droop of the leaves (Figure 16).

It was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that expeditions to the southern oceans would have natural history artists work with the naturalists during the voyage, but more importantly, artists who would return to the metropolitan centres of Britain and France to complete the illustrations of the flora and fauna of the lands they visited. These artists were among the first to actually see the living plants and animals they were illustrating in situ.

62

Chapter Three The Explorers—going to the periphery—1800 to 1802

The expeditions to Tasmania at the beginning of the nineteenth century of both Nicolas Baudin and Matthew Flinders had one feature in common; they occurred before European settlement of the island. Therefore, the entire collections of natural history specimens assembled by the scientists, as well as all sketches and illustrations made by the artists of the expeditions, were taken from the island at the periphery (of the known world), to the centre, that is, the metropolitan centres of Britain and France.

Burkhardt points out that, ‘scholars in recent years have called attention to the ways in which science has functioned as a tool of empire. They have examined, among other things, how metropolitan centres of accumulation figured in these imperial enterprises’.164 Thus, the competitive accumulation of specimens by the scientists at Kew Gardens, the British Museum165 and the scientists of the Museum d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris are intrinsically linked to both science and empire. These collections, and the art that accompanied them, revealed a strange new world in the southern oceans: a world ripe for exploitation by the European metropolis.

Nicolas Baudin (1754–1803) was the commander of the French expedition that sailed from Le Havre in 1800, and Matthew Flinders (1774–1814) the commander of the British expedition that left Plymouth in 1801. These expeditions took place at the height of the second scientific revolution and in

164 (Brockway 1979, McKay 1985, Reingold and Rothenberg 1987, MacLeod and Lewis 1988, MacLeod and Rehbock 1988, 1994, McClellan 1992, MacLeod 1993, 2000, Osborne 1994, Miller and Reill 1996, Drayton 2000), (Latour 1987) cited in Richard W Jr. Burkhardt, "Naturalists' Practices and Nature's Empire: Paris and the Platypus, 1815–1833," Pacific Science 55.4 (2001), unpaginated. 165 The British Museum was established in 1753. From 1881, the natural history specimens were housed in a separate building, and became known as the British Museum (Natural History). In 1963 (British Museum Act), the British Museum (Natural History) became an independent museum. After the Museum and Galleries Act, 1992, the museum was renamed the Natural History Museum. 63 what was arguably the golden age of scientific illustration. On board these expeditions were two of the greatest natural history illustrators of the era: Charles-Alexandre Lesueur (1778–1846) with the Baudin expedition, and Ferdinand Bauer (1760–1826) with Flinders.

The intent of these scientific expeditions, to these exciting new lands of the southern oceans, was to increase knowledge in the metropolitan centres of London and Paris. Specimens collected were brought ‘home’ to these centres to be studied, illustrated and described. Bauer and Lesueur left the metropolitan centres of Britain and France to visit what was for Europeans the unfamiliar lands of the antipodes. Their aim was to search for new wonders to bring back to the metropolitan centre to name and classify using the metropolitan’s systems. They had no intention to stay, making only brief excursions on land, to collect specimens.

The Baudin expedition

The French had, for some time, considered sending a scientific expedition to the Southern oceans and in May 1800, the committee of the Institut National wrote to Sir Joseph Banks:

The Institut National of France is desirous that several distant voyages useful to the progress of human knowledge should begin without delay. Its wishes have been endorsed by our Government which has just issued orders for the preparation as soon as possible of expeditions led by skilful navigators as well as enlightened men of science, and will approach the Government of your country for the necessary passports or safe-conducts for our vessels.166

Nicholas Baudin (1754–1803) commanded this expedition. Baudin’s background was that of a merchant captain with previous experience in the transportation of botanical and zoological specimens.167 The expedition

166 Anthony J. Brown, Ill-Starred Captains: Flinders and Baudin (Hindmarsh, South Australia: Crawford House Publishing, 2000), p.31. 167 Anthony J. Brown, Ill-Starred Captains: Flinders and Baudin (Hindmarsh, South Australia: Crawford House Publishing, 2000), p.34. 64

embarked with a large party of scientists and artists. The expedition was plagued with problems, resulting in many of the scientists and artists either leaving the voyage at Ile de France (now Mauritius) or dying before they reached Tasmania. Most significantly, the artists

assigned to record the natural history, Michel Garnier (1753–1819), Louis Lebrun (1770–?) and Jacques Milbert (1766–1840), left the expedition at Mauritius (Figure 17). Figure 17: The Poorly Defended Jean Fornasiero et al write of Milbert and Garnier, Rose, M. Garnier, ‘With more than 20 scientists on board the two ships, and Havershaw or Warren Landing, J. there was always going to be plenty of artistic work Milbert. required in the service of geographic discovery and scientific enquiry. Accordingly, three artists were engaged by the French government to undertake this important task: the 32 year old landscape artist Jacques Milbert and the 30-year-old draughtsman Louis Lebrun on board the Géographe; and the 47-year-old genre artist Michel Garnier on the Naturaliste’.168 Later Jean Fornasiero points out, ‘After all, they [the artists] had been recommended by the Commission of the Institute in Paris and were products of the French academic training. Lebrun, in fact, was a student of the great French neo-classical painter Jacques Louis David’.169 Edward Duyker notes, ‘Jacques Gerard Milbert, who worked as a professor of art at the Ecole des Mines and had some experience as a travel artist … the genre painter Michel Garnier … who had studied under Jean-Baptiste Pierre and was expected to record ethnographic details during the voyage and assist

168 F. J. Fornasiero, Peter Monteath and John West-Sooby, Encountering Terra Australis: The Australian Voyages of Nicolas Baudin and Matthew Flinders, revised edition ed. (Kent Town, South Australia: Wakefield Press, 2010), p.310. 169 F. J. Fornasiero, Peter Monteath and John West-Sooby, Encountering Terra Australis: The Australian Voyages of Nicolas Baudin and Matthew Flinders, revised edition ed. (Kent Town, South Australia: Wakefield Press, 2010), pp.311–312. 65 with botanical illustration’.170 Figure 17 shows examples of the type of art practice Garnier and Milbert favoured. They were not trained scientific illustrators and appear to have no previous experience in natural history illustration. Added to this, they had difficulties adjusting to the requirements of an expedition that included long sea-voyages in close and crowded quarters.171 Lebrun almost came to blows with the ship’s surgeon and was disliked by many of the crew, and Milbert had been offended by Baudin’s apparent concerns regarding the artists’ suitability for the expedition.172 Given the conditions, their lack of training or interest in the specialist field of scientific illustration, it is perhaps not surprising that the artists left the expedition at the first opportunity. Their departure left the scientific expedition seriously wanting. Without artists to record the expedition’s scientific findings, the Institut National’s aims for the voyage would not be achieved.

Charles-Alexandre Lesueur and Nicolas Petit, had been signed on the voyage as assistant gunners, but were instructed to take on the role of official artists for the expedition. Botanist François Péron (1775–1811), in his official account of the voyage, wrote of the change in their roles as the voyage progressed, ‘as all the artists placed aboard by the government abandoned their work at the Ile de France, this part of the work entrusted to them would have been completely lost if Messrs Lesueur and Petit, both taken aboard by our commander, had not devoted themselves from that time to fulfilling the functions of the government artists’.173 Péron then goes on to praise Lesueur’s

170 Edward Duyker, François Péron: An Impetuous Life: Naturalist and Voyager (Carlton, Victoria: Miegunah Press, 2006), p.51. 171 Jacqueline Bonnemains, "The Artists of the Baudin Expedition," The Encounter, 1802: Art of the Flinders and Baudin Voyages, ed. Sarah Thomas (Adelaide: Art Gallery of South Australia, 2002). 172 See F. J. Fornasiero, Peter Monteath and John West-Sooby, Encountering Terra Australis: The Australian Voyages of Nicolas Baudin and Matthew Flinders, revised edition ed. (Kent Town, South Australia: Wakefield Press, 2010) and Anthony J. Brown, Ill-Starred Captains: Flinders and Baudin (Hindmarsh, South Australia: Crawford House Publishing, 2000). 173 Cited in Jacqueline Bonnemains, Elliott Christopher Forsyth, Bernard William Smith, Charles Alexandre Lesueur and Nicolas Martin Petit, eds., Baudin in Australian Waters: The Artwork of the French Voyage of Discovery to the Southern Lands, 1800–1804, 66 significant artistic contribution to natural history of the expedition when he describes the illustrations as:

drawings as accurate as it is possible to draw in this genre and with which I dare to assure you in advance you will be infinitely satisfied’.174 Baudin also wrote of his decision to promote Lesueur to the role of artist, ‘[He] will be more useful to the expedition and will be more deserving of national recognition’.175

Baudin recognised both the practical and strategic value of natural history art when he states that Lesueur would be more valuable to the expedition as an illustrator than a gunner, and that his work would deserve national recognition. The natural history illustrations from that voyage are a remarkable legacy and a catalogue of some of the finest early natural history illustrations of the Australian fauna.

Charles-Alexandre Lesueur

Charles-Alexandre Lesueur was born at Le Havre on 1 January 1778.176 Although there is no record of Lesueur having had formal training in natural

(Melbourne: Oxford University Press in association with the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 1988), pp.16–17. 174 Cited in Jacqueline Bonnemains, Elliott Christopher Forsyth, Bernard William Smith, Charles Alexandre Lesueur and Nicolas Martin Petit, eds., Baudin in Australian Waters: The Artwork of the French Voyage of Discovery to the Southern Lands, 1800–1804, (Melbourne: Oxford University Press in association with the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 1988), pp.16–17. 175 Jacqueline Bonnemains, Elliott Christopher Forsyth, Bernard William Smith, Charles Alexandre Lesueur and Nicolas Martin Petit, eds., Baudin in Australian Waters: The Artwork of the French Voyage of Discovery to the Southern Lands, 1800–1804, (Melbourne: Oxford University Press in association with the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 1988), p.46. 176 Little is known of Lesueur’s early years or his educational background, particularly how he came to be such an accomplished natural history artist. It is known he attended the Collège du Havre, but there is no mention of art in the curriculum of the college at the time. Bonnemains writes that, although she could find no record of Lesueur’s possible artistic training, she found it possible he had attended the school of hydrography where his cousins had studied, and where art was a part of the curriculum. From 1797 to 1799 Lesueur was a 67

history art, or in any artistic practice, he must have been pursuing an artistic interest at the time, for Baudin to become aware his work. Baudin used Lesueur from the start of the voyage to illustrate his private journal.177 Lesueur wrote to his father, ‘Don’t worry about me. So far I have been regarded favourably by Captain Baudin who is to employ me ... usefully and without any obligation to work the ship. Our [Lesueur and Petit] job will rather be drawing…’178

Jean Baptiste Bory de Saint-Vincent (1778– Figure 18: Lesueur 1846), naturalist on the expedition, wrote of his illustrations in Baudin's journal. surprise at the quality of the drawings on first seeing Lesueur’s illustrations in Baudin’s journal (Figure 18) He asked about the artist:

They presented to me a young man of very modest appearance, who had embarked as an apprentice helmsman, though worthy to enter the expedition in a way much more useful to the progress of the arts; his talent had been discovered on board, and the commander had employed him.179

non-commissioned officer in the National Guard of Le Havre. At the age of twenty he was conscripted to the navy, but was later exempted from service for medical reasons. 177 See Gabrielle Baglione and Cédric Crémière, Charles-Alexandre Lesueur: Peintre Voyageur, Un Tresor Oublie (2009), Jacqueline Bonnemains, "Biography of Charles- Alexandre Lesueur," Baudin in Australian Waters: The Art Work of the French Voyage of Discovery to the Southern Lands (1800–1804) (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1988), and François Péron, and Christine Cornell, Voyage of Discovery to the Southern Lands: Book V Comprising Chapters Xxxv to Xli, trans. Christine Cornell (Adelaide: Friends of the State Library of South Australia, 2007). 178 MH-CL,63004, cited p.16, Jacqueline Bonnemains, "The Artists of the Baudin Expedition," Baudin in Australian Waters: The Art Work of the French Voyage of Discovery to the Southern Lands (1800–1804) (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1988). 179 Jacqueline Bonnemains, Elliott Christopher Forsyth, Bernard William Smith, Charles Alexandre Lesueur and Nicolas Martin Petit, eds., Baudin in Australian Waters: The 68

Lesueur’s lack of formal scientific training is apparent in the comments also made by Bory de Saint-Vincent upon viewing the journal:

This journal contains a multitude of figures of Figure 19: molluscs, fish or other objects of natural history, Unidentified mollusc painted with rare perfection and truth. I regretted by Lesueur. that these drawings had not been done under the direction of a naturalist; in that way they could have become more complete; but there are no anatomical details; the painter had not always represented the animal on the side that exposed its scientific features.180

The illustrations (Figures 18 and 19) above from Baudin’s journal are indeed, as Bory de Saint-Vincent suggests beautiful drawings, but, as he comments, they lack the detail needed in taxonomic illustrations for

Figure 20: Jellyfish identification of the species. If we compare Figure 19— by Lesueur. a drawing titled unidentified mollusc from Baudin’s journal, showing a lack of detail—with Lesueur’s later illustrations of jellyfish (Figure 20), it is clear what Bory de Saint-Vincent was alluding to when he commented about Lesueur’s need to be ‘under the direction of a naturalist’. Figure 20 is of two exquisite illustrations of jellyfish drawn later by Lesueur showing his development, not only as an artist, but as a natural Figure 21: history artist and scientist. Illustration showing detailed morphology. In the illustration of the marine creature (Figure 21) Lesueur has also included dissections showing the incredibly finely detailed

Artwork of the French Voyage of Discovery to the Southern Lands, 1800–1804, (Melbourne: Oxford University Press in association with the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 1988). 180 F. J. Fornasiero, Peter Monteath and John West-Sooby, Encountering Terra Australis: The Australian Voyages of Nicolas Baudin and Matthew Flinders, revised edition ed. (Kent Town, South Australia: Wakefield Press, 2010), pp.317–318. 69 brush-work for which he is famous. Jean Fornasiero et al, discuss Lesueur’s fine detail in his later illustrations thus:

… From the scientist’s point of view, Lesueur’s paintings of Australia’s native fauna are admirably precise. Every platypus hair, every echidna spine, every bird feather is drawn with meticulous care.181

However, as exquisite as the artwork is in the illustrations of mammals, it is in the illustration of marine creatures that Lesueur excels. Sarah Thomas describes them as ‘the world’s most beautiful watercolours of exotic sea creatures,’182 and Jean Fornasiero et al writes:

Perhaps the most astonishing of the zoological drawings are those depicting marine life—fish, molluscs, jellyfish, gastropods, zoophytes of such colour and profusion that we can only concur with Baudin when he says that, even with the evidence of pictures, it is hard to believe they exist. In addition to their morphological characteristics, these illustrations of even the tiniest marine animals have an evanescent quality that makes them eerily beautiful.183

This is true. Examination of Lesueur’s original

watercolours in Le Havre, with their fine brush-strokes and exquisite detail have about them a quality that is haunting and otherworldly, a quality that is never truly conveyed in any reproductions of them. The finished watercolours are on vellum, not paper, and by using this support Leseuer achieves an intensity of colour not possible on absorbent paper. Figure 22: Sketches made at Mauritius.

181 F. J. Fornasiero, Peter Monteath and John West-Sooby, Encountering Terra Australis: The Australian Voyages of Nicolas Baudin and Matthew Flinders, revised edition ed. (Kent Town, South Australia: Wakefield Press, 2010), p.326. 182 Sarah Thomas, The Encounter, 1802: Art of the Flinders and Baudin Voyages (Adelaide: Art Gallery of South Australia, 2002), p.6. 183 F. J. Fornasiero, Peter Monteath and John West-Sooby, Encountering Terra Australis: The Australian Voyages of Nicolas Baudin and Matthew Flinders, revised edition ed. (Kent Town, South Australia: Wakefield Press, 2010), p.326. 70

The archive of Lesueur’s artworks at Le Havre include a number of sketches from Mauritius (Figure 22) while he was still illustrating only for Baudin, indicating that he was making preparatory drawings before making the final watercolour illustrations in the journal itself. The illustrations show that Lesueur was, even at this time, a very skilled artist, which makes the mystery surrounding his art training all the more frustrating.

With the departure of the expedition’s official artists and a number of scientists, Bory de Saint-Vincent among them, at Mauritius, Lesueur was befriended by the only remaining naturalist onboard the expedition François Péron (1775–1810).

Working with François Péron

On 13 January, 1802 the expeditioners first cast their eyes on Tasmania. They stayed in Tasmania for over two months, leaving on March 29. Interestingly, Péron notes in his official report on the voyage that soon after landing:

M. Lesueur also set off, to go hunting in the woods. As for me, I stayed with the natives. … I then went down to the shore. The tide was out and in less than two hours I collected more than forty new species of proper molluscs, shellfish, crustaceans and fish … M. Lesueur had had better luck [Freycinet had failed to find fresh water]: he brought back twelve species of birds, three of them parrots, and the pretty tit with blue head and neck …’184

It would appear that Péron and Lesueur were now working as collaborators, not merely as scientist and artist, as Péron was clearly confident enough in Lesueur’s ability to collect specimens unassisted. It had been almost a year since the expedition had left Mauritius and Péron and Lesueur had begun working together. Jean Fornasiero et al note:

An especially productive partnership developed between Lesueur and Péron, with the result that the artist became more and more interested not just in the depiction of animals but in the science of

184 François Péron, Louis de Freycinet and Christine Cornell, Voyage of Discovery to the Southern Lands: Books I to Iii, trans. Christine Cornell (Adelaide: Friends of the State Library of South Australia, 2006), pp.179–180. 71

zoology itself. He demonstrated his capabilities during his stay in Sydney where according to Péron, he ‘killed and prepared no less than 200 birds,185 and had amassed in our repositories 68 quadrupeds’.186

Lesueur’s growing interest and knowledge of the science of zoology, acquired by his close collaboration with Péron, both in the field and in the preparation of the final artwork, were essential to his expertise as a Figure 23: Detail of emu feather. natural history illustrator. It is not only talent as an artist that is required, but also a thorough understanding of the anatomy of the animals or plants (Figure 23).

The expedition returned to Tasmania in May for a short while before heading north to Sydney. After their stay in Sydney the expedition again headed south, following the Australian coastline around southern and to what is now the . They left Australian waters in May 1803. Of the remarkable scientific collection amassed by the expedition, Edward Duyker writes:

The zoological specimens he [Peron] gathered with his colleagues during the voyage were, at the time, the most comprehensive Australian natural history collection ever made … Today, many Australian species bear Péron’s name as scientific epithets and honour his contribution as an early zoological collector. At a time when the discovery of a new species and genera was seen as the height of zoological pursuit, Péron enjoyed considerable kudos.187

185 There are several methods used to preserve birds in the field, but usually they will be skinned and some form of filling will be inserted into the skin to retain the shape of the specimen. The Handbook of Instructions for Collectors, Fourth ed. (London: Trustees of the British Museum (Natural History), 1921)pp. 30–31 describes the necessary tools, ‘a sharp knife or scalpel, a pair of stout nail-scissors, and a sharp pointed awl or darning- needle’. Other equipment used for the preservation of the specimen includes, ‘arsenical soap, bleached wool, tow’. 186 F. J. Fornasiero, Peter Monteath and John West-Sooby, Encountering Terra Australis: The Australian Voyages of Nicolas Baudin and Matthew Flinders, revised edition ed. (Kent Town, South Australia: Wakefield Press, 2010), p.319. 187 Edward Duyker, François Péron: An Impetuous Life: Naturalist and Voyager (Carlton, Victoria: Miegunah Press, 2006), p.6. 72

Like Labillardière before, Péron and Lesueur returned to the metropolitan centre in France with a comprehensive collection of Tasmanian natural history specimens. They would use these specimens to construct their image of the faraway land. While they had visited Tasmania to collect specimens and to make quick sketches, they would complete their research and the artwork in France, far from the habitat of the subjects of their work. Lesueur’s sketches, notes and finished illustrations from the voyage are now housed at the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, Le Havre. The extensive collection, containing thousands of individual pieces, is made up of 80 dossiers, each dedicated to a specific aspect of his work, for example, Dossier 72 contains the molluscs, while Dossier 80 contains mammals.188 The collection is made of all aspects of Lesueur’s work, not only his natural history illustrations, and also includes many works completed during his stay in the United States of America.

Lesueur’s art

The art of early natural history illustrators is most frequently known from the published etchings or engravings of their work. Publications created in the

metropole, far from the lands where the plants and Figure 24: Example of ‘jizz’ sketches by animals exist. The finished art works are created long Lesueur. after the scientist or artist has left the home of the exotic creatures. While they are beautiful illustrations, it is often the quick sketches made in the field, when the artist was trying to capture the jizz189 of their subject, that reveals how the artist worked, and can be the most interesting and engaging. In response to these rough sketches, made on a beach, or in the forest of some far-flung land, we may feel something of the awe and wonder of discovery felt by the artist drawing an animal never before, or rarely, seen by Europeans. It is the ‘being there’ with their subjects that gives the illustrations

188 Inventaire De La Collection Lesueur, Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle, Available: http://lehavre.fr/dossier-annexe/inventaire-de-la-lesueur, 17 November 2012. 189 Jizz “the characteristic impression given by an animal or plant” Oxford Dictionary Online, Jizz, 1989, Available: , 22 September 2010. 73 a life that cannot be easily recreated by an artist who has never seen the creature in life, in its own habitat.

In Paper Tiger: a visual history of the thylacine, Carol Freeman points out the importance of these rough sketches, as she criticises the early representations of the Tasmanian Tiger (Thylacine cynocephalus) as being Figure 25: uncharacteristic or wooden (Figure 25). These examples Thylacine. were either redrawn from earlier engravings or drawn from taxidermy specimens. Freeman writes:

[The] zoological literature published between 1808 and 1936 show most clearly the mediated nature of what was re-presented. Occasionally, however, in a few of the preparatory drawings that have survived, we see the individual response of an artist to a particular animal.190

The Lesueur Collection at the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle, Le Havre, contains wonderful examples of Lesueur’s rough, quick sketches created in the field (Figure 24). These are studies of the creatures he was seeing for the first time.

A very revealing extract from François Péron’s account of the expedition relates to the sketches of the elephant seal, Mirounga leonina made by Lesueur at King Island off the north-west coast of mainland Tasmania. His account shows the growing understanding of the importance to science of accurate illustrations to accompany the scientists’ descriptions of species. It also demonstrates the importance of first-hand experience. Péron notes that the species is not new to science at this time, but that up until this time, the illustrations of Mirounga leonina have, ‘ been described so imperfectly and has twice been so crudely drawn, that the work of Monsieur Lesueur and myself

190 Carol Freeman, Paper Tiger: A Visual History of the Thylacine, Human-Animal Studies, ed. Kenneth Shapiro (Leiden: Brill, Hotei Publishing, 2010), p.16. 74

must receive special attention because of that which preceded ours ... Anson (Figure 26)’.191 Péron then notes the incorrect details of the illustration: Figure 27: The Sea If the greater part of the observations of the English Lion of Pernetty. Lord are exact, it is not so for the drawing [my emphasis] that accompanies them; it savours too much of that attitude that this animal could not assume; a facial expression that it does not have; hands with five distinct fingers, jointed, and each furnished with a well-rounded nail, an elegantly

turned up tail, symmetrically divided into acanthus Figure 26: Sea Lion and Lioness of leaves; everything in this engraving seems to have Knapton. had its aim the reproduction of the ancient Tritons of Greek mythology or the mermen of popular tradition.192

Péron is equally scathing in his critique of Pernetty’s illustration of the Elephant Seal.

Pernetty (Figure 27) himself gave a second engraving of it equally incorrect, or rather, not less false ... In naming it under the specific title Leonina Linnaeus gives it a characteristic that it has never had, that of a crest on the forehead ... this famous naturalist was evidently misled by the inaccurate engravings of Anson and Pernetty. All the naturalists since Linnaeus have perpetuated the same error.193

A collection of Lesueur’s sketches of the Elephant Seal (Mirounga leonina), made at King Island (Figure 28), traces the progression from quick pencil or charcoal sketch, through to watercolour, and then finally to the published etching.194

191 Helen Mary Micco, King Island and the Sealing Trade 1802 (Canberra: Roebuck Society, 1971), pp.21–22. 192 Helen Mary Micco, King Island and the Sealing Trade 1802 (Canberra: Roebuck Society, 1971), pp.21–22. 193 From chapters XXII and XIII of François Péron’s official account of the Baudin expedition. Translated by, Helen Mary Micco, King Island and the Sealing Trade 1802 (Canberra: Roebuck Society, 1971), pp.21–22. 194 I wish to thank Culture, Patrimoine, Tourisme, Muséum d’histoire naturelle, Le Havre for the use of the images of Mirounga leonina. 75

Lesueur initially prepared a number of very quick sketches and then works more and more detail into his sketches as he gains familiarity with the animal before him. These sketches also show what Susan Hunt and Paul Carter describe when they write, ‘Another type of visual potency came from their status as exploration art,

since something of the sheer excitement of discovery seems to permeate Lesueur’s pictures’.195 In these rough sketches, especially, one can picture Lesueur’s thrill as, perched on a rock or tree stump, he repeatedly quickly

sketches the novel creature before him; trying to capture its jizz or essence.

This collection also shows how the original artwork is at times altered through iterations to the final process of etching (Figure 28), when the person creating the

etching plate has never seen the live animal or plant and cannot capture that jizz. It is also interesting to note how the background, or landscape, changes in the iterations.

In the examples in Figure 28 the changes range from the Figure 28: forested beach that is likely the most accurate view of Mirounga leonina. the landscape in which Lesueur drew his sketches. The

watercolour is more in keeping with traditional scientific illustration, where there is little to distract from the specimen being highlighted. The third—the etching—with the inclusion of the sealers’ huts in the background can now be seen to contain another agenda. Baudin and other members of the expedition expressed concerns about the excessive hunting of elephant seals on King Island by British sealers, and the inclusion of the sealers’ huts is a way of highlighting this.196

195 Susan Hunt and Paul Carter, Terre Napoleon: Australia through French Eyes 1800–1804 (Sydney: Historic Houses Trust, 1999), p.9. 196 See F. J. Fornasiero, Peter Monteath and John West-Sooby, Encountering Terra Australis: The Australian Voyages of Nicolas Baudin and Matthew Flinders, revised edition ed. (Kent 76

Lesueur’s technique was therefore to complete an initial quick pencil or charcoal field sketches, which he would then refine in a series of sketches, and the final composition often provided various views of the creature. A number of these, usually charcoal, sketches were further refined before he prepared the final watercolour painting. This painting was completed several months, or even years, after the original sketches were drawn. Lesueur’s final watercolours, painted on vellum, are noted for their meticulous detail; every hair or feather being individually painted with a fine brush. One can see a distinct difference in the final watercolour illustrations between the creatures he had the time to sketch in their own environment and those that could only be drawn only from the preserved remains of animals.

For example, many of his bird illustrations are stiff and awkward, clearly drawn from a dead specimen, lacking the jizz he captured so wonderfully in the other drawings Figure 29: New he drew in situ (Figure 29). The jizz of the bird cannot Holland Honeyeater (Phylidonyris easily be created when there are no preliminary sketches, novaehollandiae). or a living specimen, and no recollection of how the bird

moved, to work from. In Chapter Seven, I discuss the techniques used by John James Audubon, in working with birds very familiar to him, to create their jizz in his exquisite illustrations.

As noted previously, Lesueur was an active participant in the collecting of specimens, often going ashore for days at a time with Péron. Together they gathered more than 180,000 specimens on the expedition, including more than 2500 new species.197 The illustrations made from these specimens are among

Town, South Australia: Wakefield Press, 2010), Helen Mary Micco, King Island and the Sealing Trade 1802 (Canberra: Roebuck Society, 1971). 197 Jacqueline Bonnemains, Elliott Christopher Forsyth, Bernard William Smith, Charles Alexandre Lesueur and Nicolas Martin Petit, eds., Baudin in Australian Waters: The Artwork of the French Voyage of Discovery to the Southern Lands, 1800–1804, (Melbourne: Oxford University Press in association with the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 1988), p.22. 77 the first of these species, as such, they are significant to the historical record of the Tasmanian fauna and flora.

Publishing the scientific results and illustrations

The commander of an expedition usually wrote the official account of the voyage, but Nicolas Baudin died in Mauritius, on the voyage back to France. Péron now saw that role as his and shortly after the expedition’s return to Le Havre in March 1804, he wrote letters to the Minister of Marine, to Madame Bonaparte and even to Bonaparte himself, requesting permission for Lesueur and himself to publish the scientific results of the voyage. Also, as Edward Duyker notes, they had not been paid for the voyage and were now ‘extremely anxious about their financial predicament and their scientific prospects’.198 They did, however, also carry out research on the specimens and independently published some results. Edward Duyker continues, ‘Although Péron would ultimately gain the permission of the Minister of Marine to write the official account of the voyage, he did not gain an undertaking to pay for its publication ... The two friends appear to have worked through 1805 and the first half of 1806 ... presumably living on their back pay’.199

As will be shown later, Péron and Lesueur were not alone in their despair at not having the results of a voyage published. Their counterparts on the British expedition of the same time would suffer a similar fate. It is a strange paradox that, while the collecting of specimens was seen as such a vital aspect of empire for both Britain and France, there was such reluctance to pay for and ensure that the results of research on those same specimens was published.

The first volume of Péron’s account of the expedition, Voyage de découvertes aux Terres Australes: exécuté par ordre de S. M. l'empereur et roi, sur les corvettes le Géographe, le Naturaliste, et la goëlette le Casuarina, pendent les

198 Edward Duyker, François Péron: An Impetuous Life: Naturalist and Voyager (Carlton, Victoria: Miegunah Press, 2006) p.213. 199 Edward Duyker, François Péron: An Impetuous Life: Naturalist and Voyager (Carlton, Victoria: Miegunah Press, 2006), pp.216–217. 78 années 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803 et 1804,200 was published in 1807. Péron’s health was never good after his return from the expedition, but he continued his research with Lesueur on the next volume of their work. On 10 December 1810 Péron died, and, as Edward Duyker writes

Shortly after Péron’s death, the director of the Muséum ordered seals to be placed on the doors of his Paris lodgings until natural history objects he had borrowed for study were returned … Poor Lesueur, attempting to complete his drawings of fish, reptiles and sponges was even threatened with litigation if he caused any obstruction to this reclamation’.201

After Péron’s death, the task of preparing the account of the voyage was handed, not to Lesueur who had worked so closely with Péron for so many years, but to Louis de Freycinet (1779–1842) commander of the Casuarina, a ship that joined the expedition in Sydney. The disappointed Lesueur continued working on his illustrations from the expedition specimens, however, in 1815, fearing he would lose his government pension Lesueur accompanied William Maclure (1763–1840) to the United States of America where he stayed until 1837, when he returned to France. In 1846, Lesueur was appointed as curator for the museum at Le Havre, but he died suddenly on 12 December of that year before the completion of the museum.202 While Charles-Alexandre Lesueur never returned to the southern oceans, and the vast majority of his illustrations of the Australian fauna are housed at Muséum d'histoire naturelle, Le Havre, he and his illustrations have had a

200 François Péron, Voyage De Découvertes Aux Terres Australes: Exécuté Par Ordre De S. M. L'empereur Et Roi, Sur Les Corvettes Le Géographe, Le Naturaliste, Et La Goëlette Le Casuarina, Pendent Les Années 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803 Et 1804 (Paris: Arthus Bertrand, 1824). 201 Edward Duyker, François Péron: An Impetuous Life: Naturalist and Voyager (Carlton, Victoria: Miegunah Press, 2006), p.235. 202 Jacqueline Bonnemains, "Biography of Charles-Alexandre Lesueur," Baudin in Australian Waters: The Art Work of the French Voyage of Discovery to the Southern Lands (1800– 1804) (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1988), Anthony J. Brown, Ill-Starred Captains: Flinders and Baudin (Hindmarsh, South Australia: Crawford House Publishing, 2000), F. J. Fornasiero, Peter Monteath and John West-Sooby, Encountering Terra Australis: The Australian Voyages of Nicolas Baudin and Matthew Flinders, revised edition ed. (Kent Town, South Australia: Wakefield Press, 2010). 79 significant impact here. They have left a legacy for Tasmanians, a remarkable compendium of the state’s fauna by arguably the finest zoological artist of the time. From the earliest days of colonisation, these images have been sought by the settlers living in Tasmania and were brought to the island by the members of the scientific societies that formed there. For example Péron’s account of the expedition, Voyage de découvertes aux Terres Australes: exécuté par ordre de S. M. l'empereur et roi, sur les corvettes le Géographe, le Naturaliste, et la goëlette le Casuarina, pendent les années 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803 et 1804, in both the French and later English copies are held in The Royal Society of Tasmania’s library. As interest in Australia’s early explorers increases and the number of publications about them grows, so too does the interest in the images captured by the illustrators from those expeditions.

The Flinders expedition

As Baudin’s expedition set sail from Le Havre in October 1800, a British expedition with somewhat similar goals was also preparing to leave from Plymouth. The British government had become aware of a proposed French scientific expedition to the southern oceans when the Institut National de France approached them in May 1800 for ‘the necessary passports or safe- conducts for our vessels’.203 Alarmed by the prospect of the French expedition navigating through the waters of the uncharted southern Australian coastline, and possibly laying claim to lands there, the British government ordered a British expedition to be sent. The expedition set sail in July 1801 some nine months after Baudin left France. Matthew Flinders (1774–1814), a young naval commander, led this expedition.

Flinders was a logical choice. He was very experienced in the exploration of the southern oceans and charting the Australian coastline. He had sailed with (1754–1817) to Tahiti; and had been stationed at Port Jackson where he had charted the surrounding coastline and that of . His

203 Anthony J. Brown, Ill-Starred Captains: Flinders and Baudin (Hindmarsh, South Australia: Crawford House Publishing, 2000), p.31. 80 greatest achievement to date had been the circumnavigation of Tasmania with George Bass (1771–1803)—proving Tasmania to be an island. Flinders was interested in continuing the exploration of the Australian coastline, but unable to find funding in Australia, Flinders headed to England. Jean Fornasiero et al note:

The great hurdle to be cleared there was the fact that naval resources, in particular, were being stretched to the limit in war against post-revolutionary France. If assistance were to be gained, it would have to be from a person of influence who was able to look beyond the political and financial exigencies of the day.204

Flinders sought, and gained the patronage of Sir Joseph Banks in his quest for an expedition to further chart the Australian coastline. According to Jean Fornasiero et al, ‘Immediately upon his arrival back in England, Flinders wrote perhaps the most important letter of his career. ‘Presuming’ to address Sir Joseph Banks, Flinders mounted the case for leading a circumnavigatory expedition of discovery back to the continent from which he had just returned’.205

His timing could not have been better as Banks had recently been approached by the Institut National de France regarding their scientific expedition to Australia. He was, therefore, well placed to argue the case for a British expedition despite the limited resources available. Like the French expedition, this was to be ostensibly a scientific venture. Therefore a group of scientists and artists was assembled for the voyage; Flinders’ brother Samuel to assist with hydrographic work, the naturalist Robert Brown (1773–1858), landscape painter (1781–1850), and natural history artist Ferdinand Bauer (1760–1826) were recommended by Banks to record the natural history,

204 F. J. Fornasiero, Peter Monteath and John West-Sooby, Encountering Terra Australis: The Australian Voyages of Nicolas Baudin and Matthew Flinders, revised edition ed. (Kent Town, South Australia: Wakefield Press, 2010), p.33. 205 Anthony J. Brown, Ill-Starred Captains: Flinders and Baudin (Hindmarsh, South Australia: Crawford House Publishing, 2000), p.63. 81 the gardener John Good, mineralogist and astronomer John Crosley, completed the scientific team.206

Ferdinand Bauer

Ferdinand Lucas Bauer was born on 20 January 1760, in Feldsperg, Austria, where his father held the appointment of Painter to the court of the Prince of Lichtenstein.207 Unlike Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, Bauer had the artistic background, and training needed to be a great natural history artist. Little is known of Bauer’s personal life as he left no diaries or journals and few letters of his life or travels— there is not even a known portrait. Most of the information concerning his early life comes from the writings of fellow Austrian, Jan Lhotsky (1795–1866), who also travelled to Australia and Tasmania in the 1800s.208 It is known that Bauer was already an experienced botanical artist by his early twenties, and he had gained valuable field experience Figure 30: Silene coronaria from Flora and understood the importance of that field experience Graeca by to an illustrator, when he joined John Skibthorp on an Ferdinand Bauer. 209 expedition to Greece and Asia Minor in 1784. Bauer

206 F. J. Fornasiero, Peter Monteath and John West-Sooby, Encountering Terra Australis: The Australian Voyages of Nicolas Baudin and Matthew Flinders, revised edition ed. (Kent Town, South Australia: Wakefield Press, 2010), Anthony J. Brown, Ill-Starred Captains: Flinders and Baudin (Hindmarsh, South Australia: Crawford House Publishing, 2000), and Matthew Flinders, A Voyage to Terra Australis (London: G&W Nicol, 1814). 207 Cited in Marlene J Norst, Ferdinand Bauer: The Australian Natural History Drawings, Art in Natural History (London: British Museum (Natural History), 1989), p.15. Lys De Bray, The Art of Botanical Illustration: A History of the Classic Illustrators and Their Achievements (Royston [England] Eagle Editions, 2001), gives Bauer’s dates as 1756–1826. 208 Marlene J Norst, Ferdinand Bauer: The Australian Natural History Drawings, Art in Natural History (London: British Museum (Natural History), 1989), p.10. 209 John Skibthorp was the Professor of Botany at Oxford University. Ferdinand Bauer was recommended to him as artist for a planned expedition to Greece and Asia Minor by both Boccius and Jacquin. 82

then accompanied Skibthorp to Oxford in 1788 where they worked together on Flora Graeca.210 The illustration of Silene coronaria (Figure 30) records Bauer’s significant skill as a botanical illustrator at this time.

The extraordinary illustrations Bauer worked on for Flora Graeca and his willingness to travel, soon

brought him to the attention of Joseph Banks who had Figure 31: Ellis recently employed his brother Franz as botanical aquatic microscope c. 1775. illustrator for Kew Gardens. Banks suggested Ferdinand Bauer’s appointment as natural history artist to the Investigator expedition.211 Bauer was to work with the expedition’s naturalist Robert Brown. The pairing of Brown and Bauer, like that of Péron and Lesueur, would form one of the great partnerships in the scientific research and depiction of the Australia fauna and flora.

Working with Robert Brown

It was his collaboration with the scientist Robert Brown and the knowledge gained from him, that made Bauer one of the greatest natural history artists of all time. Helen Hewson writes, ‘Brown undoubtedly influenced the extent and level of observation needing to be recorded in the drawings by Ferdinand Bauer. Although he brought scientific accuracy to his illustrations through his detailed diagrams of the specimen’s morphology, his illustrations are also beautiful studies of the plants.

Brown worked closely with Bauer on the voyage, helping him refine his use of the microscope. I use the word ‘refine’ as I would reason that Bauer’s work with Skibthorp and the detail contained in his illustrations for Flora Graeca

210 John Skibthorp, Flora Graeca (London: Richard Taylor, 1806). 211 Peter Watts, Jo Anne Pomfrett and David Mabberley, An Exquisite Eye: The Australian Flora & Fauna Drawings 1801–1820 of Ferdinand Bauer (Glebe, New South Wales: Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, c1997), p.10. 83 would indicate he was already using a microscope or hand lens at this time. That Bauer had use of a microscope during the voyage is known, for, according to Marlene Norst, ‘While the accommodation on ship was fairly cramped, the scientists were particularly well equipped for their mission. Not only did they have a collection of Australian specimens, a greenhouse and an Ellis aquatic microscope …’ (Figure 31).212

As they collected more and more specimens, the need for storage meant they had to improvise as the voyage progressed. Matthew Flinders wrote of the gathering of materials in his journal:

A good number of planks and logs were taken on board, for making garden boxes to contain the most curious plants collected by the naturalist ...213

While Robert Brown is known today as one of the greatest botanists of his era, it must not be forgotten he was on board the expedition as a naturalist, and he and Bauer collected zoological, as well as the botanical, specimens on the voyage.214 It must be assumed Brown worked as closely on the zoological specimens with Bauer as he did the botanical specimens. Like the French team of Péron and Lesueur, Brown and Bauer collected specimens together, but they also collected individually. Bauer, like Lesueur, soon gained the scientific expertise necessary to enable him to gather and preserve specimens of scientific value. They were artists of the second scientific revolution—as well as being talented artists, they had also gained the new scientific rigour required of natural history illustration of this time.

212 Marlene J Norst, Ferdinand Bauer: The Australian Natural History Drawings, Art in Natural History (London: British Museum (Natural History), 1989), p.22. 213 Peter Watts, Jo Anne Pomfrett and David Mabberley, An Exquisite Eye: The Australian Flora & Fauna Drawings 1801–1820 of Ferdinand Bauer (Glebe, New South Wales: Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, c1997), p.46. 214 Marlene J Norst, Ferdinand Bauer: The Australian Natural History Drawings, Art in Natural History (London: British Museum (Natural History), 1989), Matthew Flinders, A Voyage to Terra Australis (London: G&W Nicol, 1814), Anthony J. Brown, Ill-Starred Captains: Flinders and Baudin (Hindmarsh, South Australia: Crawford House Publishing, 2000). 84

Both Brown and Bauer visited King Island, off the north-west coast of Tasmania on the expedition. However after the Investigator returned to Sydney in June 1803, and was subsequently condemned as ‘unfit to proceed to sea’.215 Brown and Bauer decided to remain in Sydney to continue work on the specimens and sketches rather than accompany Flinders on his return to England to secure another ship. In Sydney, Bauer and Brown shared a house where they worked together, and this enabled Bauer to work on, or to complete, a significant number of drawings while still in Australia. Bauer wrote to Sir Joseph Banks of his decision to stay in New South Wales:

This unexpected determination of Cap. Flinders; required much consideration to take such part which maight be to your departments advantageous, if an object of the Voyage we have undertaken and if such should be finished: our stay in New South Wales would add much to the collections and if not new subjects could be procurt I would be able to finish some from them wath I have already made and must be done in England. Therefore our stay in New South Wales would be mor to the interest for our engagemend and has occasiond my resolution to remain here…216

Robert Brown accompanied William Paterson (1755–1810) to Tasmania in 1804. Paterson had been selected to establish a settlement at Port Dalrymple in the north of the island and Brown was eager to spend more time collecting in Tasmania. Paterson was a keen naturalist who had corresponded with Sir Joseph Banks for many years and was sympathetic to Brown’s joining the venture.217 Brown stayed in Tasmania for nine months, during which time Bauer continued to work on his illustrations and collections in the Sydney area. Bauer also travelled alone to Norfolk Island where he occupied himself

215 Historical Records of Australia, series 1, vol.4, p.386, cited in Marlene J Norst, Ferdinand Bauer: The Australian Natural History Drawings, Art in Natural History (London: British Museum (Natural History), 1989). 216 Cited in Marlene J Norst, Ferdinand Bauer: The Australian Natural History Drawings, Art in Natural History (London: British Museum (Natural History), 1989), pp.53–54. 217 David S. Macmillan, Paterson, William (1775–1810), Australian National Library, Available: http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/paterson-william-2541/text3455, 24 August 2011. 85 sketching and collecting specimens.218 According to Jan Lhotsky, ‘during this period, Ferdinand [Bauer] visited Norfolk Island, and spent eight months there, collecting those materials from which [Stephan] Endlicher [1804–1849] has been subsequently enabled to compile his Flora Norfolk’.219 In discussing Bauer’s skills as a collector Marlene Norst writes:

He had an excellent collection and his Australian plants are, today, to be found in herbaria as far apart as Capetown, Budapest and Berlin, though the bulk went to the Museum in Vienna.220

Bauer’s skill as a collector was to prove vitally important when disaster struck, for as Norst notes:

When the Porpoise was wrecked in 1803, Brown lost many of his best specimens. Although he had duplicates, these were not always of the same quality and he was grateful to Bauer for providing him with some replacements from his own collection.221

Brown and Bauer continued working in Sydney until January 1805, until the Investigator was due to sail, bound for England. Having no word from Flinders, and unaware of his imprisonment in Mauritius, Bauer and Brown decided to return on the Investigator.

218 Marlene J Norst, Ferdinand Bauer: The Australian Natural History Drawings, Art in Natural History (London: British Museum (Natural History), 1989), Peter Watts, Jo Anne Pomfrett and David Mabberley, An Exquisite Eye: The Australian Flora & Fauna Drawings 1801–1820 of Ferdinand Bauer (Glebe, New South Wales: Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, c1997). 219 Cited in Marlene J Norst, Ferdinand Bauer: The Australian Natural History Drawings, Art in Natural History (London: British Museum (Natural History), 1989), p.56. Endlicher, like Bauer was Austrian. Prodromus Florae Norfolkicae was published in 1833 in Austria. 220 Marlene J Norst, Ferdinand Bauer: The Australian Natural History Drawings, Art in Natural History (London: British Museum (Natural History), 1989), p.61. 221 Marlene J Norst, Ferdinand Bauer: The Australian Natural History Drawings, Art in Natural History (London: British Museum (Natural History), 1989), p.61. 86

During the expedition, Bauer completed over two thousand drawings of the fauna and flora he encountered, and Brown collected over three thousand Figure 32: Bauer's five hundred plant specimens. A huge bounty! colour chart.

Bauer’s art

Natural history artists developed their own individual techniques to deal with documenting the overwhelming number of specimens that were collected on the early expeditions. Bauer and Lesueur used markedly different

techniques for their field sketches, different too to that of another great natural history artist to work on Australian botany, Sydney Parkinson.

Lesueur used his jizz sketches, while Parkinson painted one section of the plant or animal in detail while in the field as a guide, and Bauer instead devised a chart of standard, numbered colours he could refer to later as he worked on the final illustrations (Figure 32). Bauer would include the colour code on the pencil sketches (Figure 33 he drew in the field as a guide when he came to make his final watercolour paintings sometimes

months, or even years, after he made his first sketches. Figure 33: Parkinson's method This was the same technique he had used in Greece of rough sketch, Bauer's numbering while working on sketches with Skibthorp. method. Bauer appears to have worked up his numbered fauna drawings in the field observing the live specimens, and working with recently captured or killed specimens. In September 1803, Robert Brown wrote to Joseph Banks about the description of a koala he had included:

87

The necessity of sending my description, which is very imperfect, as the animal will not submit to be closely inspected, and I have had no opportunity of dissecting one …222

The poor koala paid for its fighting spirit, for the illustration below (Figure 34) is titled Koala, shot at ‘Hat Hill, New South Wales, June–September 1803. It is a sad reminder that when these explorers came to the periphery to collect specimens to describe and illustrate,

they did so, often at the cost of the animal’s life. As Figure 34: Koala by Ferdinand Bauer. noted previously, Lesueur shot and killed many birds and mammals for his illustrations.

After the initial colour coded field sketches were completed, Bauer worked on the watercolour paintings when time permitted; if the expedition was at sea, or while he was in Sydney, or even many years later in London and Vienna. It is thought he did work on some final illustrations when he was in Sydney. Peter Watts et al. give an explanation of the probability that Bauer completed some works in Sydney (Figure 35) in their book on Bauer’s art accompanying an exhibition of his work held in Sydney in late 1997 to mid 1998. According to Peter Watts et al. there are at least sixteen

Figure 35: Corybus of Bauer’s Australian orchid illustrations that are unguiculatus A and duplicates with one example having discoloured paper B. and ‘blue pigment sometimes ‘foxed’ to a reddish brown’.223 Ferdinand Bauer had the time and opportunity

222 HRNSW, vol 5, p.228, cited in Peter Watts, Jo Anne Pomfrett and David Mabberley, An Exquisite Eye: The Australian Flora & Fauna Drawings 1801–1820 of Ferdinand Bauer (Glebe, New South Wales: Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, c1997), p.140. 223 Peter Watts, Jo Anne Pomfrett and David Mabberley, An Exquisite Eye: The Australian Flora & Fauna Drawings 1801–1820 of Ferdinand Bauer (Glebe, New South Wales: Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, c1997), p.158. 88 to complete a number of illustrations while still in Australia. Peter Watts et al. explain:

He is likely to have completed some whilst Brown was in Tasmania and Bauer was living alone and undisturbed at Farm Cove, before he went to Norfolk Island in August that year. On his return to Sydney from Norfolk Island, he had a further ten weeks working, probably with Brown: he also had plenty of unhindered time on the long voyage home in the Investigator.224

While Bauer worked on some illustrations in Australia and on the voyage back to England, the materials available to him there were not always of the best quality. This necessitated the redrawing of some pieces, as Peter Watts et al. note:

It may well be that the B series, perhaps prepared with inferior pigments including a blue containing pyrites (which could break down liberating acid and burning the paper in the conditions of the voyage … some of the B series could have been ‘finished’ in Farm Cove.225

If this is the case, it makes these two paintings of the same specimen, by the same artist, very interesting. One set may well be called ‘Australian’ and the other ‘English’. It can be argued that the ‘B’ series, completed in Farm Cove, should be ‘reclaimed’, in the same vein as Ian McLean suggests for the work of the Port Jackson School. McLean claims the Port Jackson works are, ‘foundational pictures ... important to Australia’s sense of identity and history’.226 This would also apply to Bauer’s natural history illustrations completed whilst in Australia.

224 Peter Watts, Jo Anne Pomfrett and David Mabberley, An Exquisite Eye: The Australian Flora & Fauna Drawings 1801–1820 of Ferdinand Bauer (Glebe, New South Wales: Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, c1997), p.158. 225 Peter Watts, Jo Anne Pomfrett and David Mabberley, An Exquisite Eye: The Australian Flora & Fauna Drawings 1801–1820 of Ferdinand Bauer (Glebe, New South Wales: Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, c1997), p.158. 226 Ian McLean, "Reclaiming Australia: The Port Jackson School and Its Exile," Art and Australia 33.1 (1995). 89

Publishing the scientific results and illustrations

Unlike the work of artists from the French expedition of the same time, few of Bauer’s illustrations from the voyage were published in the immediate aftermath of the expedition. As a result, while Bauer’s illustrations became well-known to scientists after his return from Australia, and while he was being acknowledged as one

of the greatest natural history illustrators, little of his Figure 36: Grevillea banksii from work was known to the public. John Lindley (1799– Illustrationes florae 1865)227 wrote at the time of Bauer and Brown’s return Novae Hollandiae. to England of the concern over the lack of published work from the expedition:

With Flinders’ voyage, a Botanist and a Botanical draughtsman were associated at the public charge; and both of these officers discharged their duty of collecting materials most zealously. But if we inquire for the public Botanical advantage which has been derived from that expedition, either to ourselves or to the New South Wales colonists, we find it to consist of little ... That full account of the Botanical discoveries made during Flinders’ expedition, which the public had a right to expect, has never appeared. The dried plants, or what remains of them, are to be found in the cases of the British Museum; and the beautiful plates made by Mr Ferdinand Bauer with such care and admirable skill, after slumbering for years at the Admiralty, are now (we understand) also at the Museum.228

227 Lindley, John (1799–1865), assistant librarian to Banks; Assistant Secretary to the Royal Horticultural Society (1822); first Professor of Botany at the University of London (1829– 1860); lecturer in botany to the Apothecaries' Company (1836); later Professor of Botany at Cambridge University. It was on his Report to Treasury and Parliament that the Royal Garden at Kew was saved from destruction in 1838. A. E. Orchard, A History of Systematic Botany in Australia, in Vol.1, 2nd Ed., 1999, Australian National Botanic Gardens, Available: http://www.anbg.gov.au/biography/lindley-john.html, 20 October 2011. 228 John Lindley, Gardener’s Chronicle, 1844, cited in Helen Hewson, Australia: 300 Years of Botanical Illustration (Collingwood, Vic: CSIRO Publishing, 1999), p.45. 90

In January 1806, Sir Joseph Banks wrote to the Admiralty suggesting they continue to employ Bauer so that he could complete his illustrations. Oddly, he also suggests, ‘that Brown and Bauer be advised to join forces in publishing at their own expense a periodical work consisting of engravings of the Australian illustrations and their description’.229

Both Bauer and Brown attempted to have their work published. In 1810, Brown published the unillustrated Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae van-Diemen. Meanwhile in 1813, Bauer published Illustrationes Florae Novae Hollandiae,230 containing fifteen plates (Figure 36). The plates were metal engravings with the drawings and engraving being done by Bauer himself. Some sets were hand-coloured, the original sets being coloured by Bauer.231 A copy of this exquisite book is held at the State Library of Tasmania. Bauer did succeed in having other illustrations published; but not in England. In 1833, Austrian botanist published a work containing Bauer’s illustrations from his time in Norfolk Island, Prodromus Florae Norfolkicae (Flora Norfolk).232

If as Aitkin asserts, ‘Capturing a country’s flora between the pages of a book was a powerful expression of control,’233 why did the British not feel compelled to publish Bauer’s work? It could simply be the case that they did not want to pay for it. Having control of the land—that is, having colonised the land—the government of the metropolitan centre, with no personal sense of belonging to the periphery; no sense of personal attachment, or investment to

229 Cited in Marlene J Norst, Ferdinand Bauer: The Australian Natural History Drawings, Art in Natural History (London: British Museum (Natural History), 1989), p.72. 230 Ferdinand Bauer, Illustrationes Florae Novae Hollandiae, Sive, Icones Generum Quae in Prodromo Florae Novae Hollandiae Et Insulae Van Diemen Descripsit Robertus Brown (London: Veneunt apud auctorem, 1813). 231 Helen Hewson, Australia: 300 Years of Botanical Illustration (Collingwood, Vic: CSIRO Publishing, 1999), p.45. 232 Stephan Endlicher, Prodromus Florae Norfolkicae (Vindoboae: Apud Fridericum Beck, 1833). 233 Richard Aitken, Botanical Riches: Stories of Botanical Exploration, ed. Clare Coney (Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2006), p.147. 91 the fauna and flora, was content to merely possess the material gathered at the periphery. The political motives of colonisation outweighed those of scientific research.

Unlike Lesueur’s work, which was collected by early settlers in Tasmania, Bauer’s illustrations would remain relatively unknown to the public even into the late twentieth century. It was not until an emergent interest in the early exploration of Australia, and the work of the artists onboard, resulted in the publication of books by Marlene Norst, Peter Watts, Jo Anne Pomfrett and David Mabberley, that Bauer came to the public’s notice.

Today, Bauer’s work is considered to be amongst the finest examples of nineteenth century natural history illustration of Tasmania’s fauna and flora, and as such, is now contained in the collections of major cultural institutions of the State.

The two expeditions

The European discovery and exploration of Australia occurred at a time, the second scientific revolution, when scientists began to examine natural history with a new wonder. Australia’s exotic and confounding natural history would inspire the greatest minds and artists of the era. Two scientific expeditions— one French, one British—set out at the beginning of the nineteenth century to explore the uncharted southern coastline of Australia and of the island colony, Tasmania.

Today, both voyages are an important part of Tasmania’s history. The artists Charles-Alexandre Lesueur and Ferdinand Bauer are considered the greatest natural history artists of their era. Exhibitions of their work are held regularly, and books of their work published. Authors regularly write of the two expeditions within the same text, Anthony Brown’s Ill-starred captains: Flinders and Baudin and Jean Fornasiero, Peter Moneath and John West- Sooby’s Encountering Terra Australia, for example. But this was not always

92

the case. Why were they regarded so differently in the early nineteenth century?

Matthew Flinders returned to Britain to great acclaim and as a celebrated navigator. Nicolas Baudin died during the voyage with his reputation destroyed.

Nicolas Baudin’s expedition was fraught with personal differences that would eventually tear it apart. Baudin’s death on the expedition, and therefore his inability to present his account of the voyage, led to his exploits

being largely forgotten until recently with renewed Figure 37: Etchings and lithographs. interest in the voyages.

Matthew Flinders’ imprisonment by the French at Mauritius for seven years resulted in the delay of publication of his account of the voyage (Figure 37). Flinders, however has long been regarded as one of the great names in Australian exploration. Flinders’ long imprisonment also meant Robert Brown and Ferdinand Bauer returned to England alone with no-one to champion their cause, delaying publication and therefore recognition of their work. The delay in publishing Bauer’s illustrations meant the work was not available to the early settlers of Tasmania. By locking away the information, the ‘centres of accumulation’—the metropolitan centres—retained control over the material artefacts of the periphery, and any knowledge that could be gained from them. Later, in their search for material to build a history upon, these images gained importance to the settler society, hence the publication and accumulation of original paintings, prints and the exhibitions of the works.

93

Chapter Four The Convict—arriving at the periphery—1803 to 1837

I have been a stranger in a strange land. Exodus 2:22

Britain and France were at war at the beginning of the nineteenth century. As a result, the British government grew increasingly alarmed at the interest shown in Australia by the French at that time. The British were above all concerned by the attention on the island of Tasmania, to the south of mainland Australia, especially that shown by the 1800 Baudin scientific expedition. Fearing the French were considering Tasmania as a place to establish their presence in the Southern oceans, the British decided to create their own base on the island to curtail any possibility of a French settlement there. On 23 November 1802, Philip King, Governor of New South Wales, wrote to Lord Hobart, HM Secretary of State:

… I was informed that some of the French officers [on the Baudin expedition] during their stay here had informed L’t Col. Paterson and others that it was the intention of the French to make a settlement in what is called by us ‘Storm Bay Passage’ … on the east side of Van Diemen’s Land [Tasmania] … I have lost no time in expediting the Cumberland, armed Colonial Schooner. She sails this day, and from the arrangements I have made His Majesty’s claim to that part of this territory cannot be disputed. 234

There appears, however, to have been some delay in sailing, for it was not until early 1803, that a small contingent of soldiers and convicts, led by Lieutenant John Bowen (1780–1827), was sent from Sydney to start a new settlement on the island. Like New South Wales before it, this new outpost would be first and foremost, a penal settlement. The party landed at , on the River Derwent on 12 September 1803. Of the 49 people in the first group to settle in Tasmania, 24 were convicts, the remainder being their gaolers and

234 HRNSW, op. cit., p.1008, cited in Anthony J. Brown, Ill-Starred Captains: Flinders and Baudin (Hindmarsh, South Australia: Crawford House Publishing, 2000), pp.284–85. See also , A Short : Illustrated Edition (Ringwod, Victoria: Penguin Books, 1963), p.29. 94 members of their families.235 Tasmania thus became the second penal outpost after New South Wales and between 1803 and 1853 when transportation ceased, some 72,500 convicts would be sent to the island.236

Many a tearful eye and melancholy look turned towards it by our unfortunate passengers. Poor wretches, how few of them will ever tread the soil of that loved country.237

With the establishment of the British penal outpost in Tasmania, two groups of people would come to lose their native lands, their place, their centre, and also be moved to the periphery. The first group was the Indigenous people of the island—‘in establishing this isolated prison the British assumed control of all the land and thus callously dispossessed its Indigenous inhabitants’.238 The second group to lose their native lands were the convicts. They were sentenced to exile in a far-flung island, with little or no hope of ever returning to their homelands. Many convicts felt this loss.

Jail Journal, a diary commenced onboard the Shearwater by the Irish ‘prisoner in the hands of the English’239 is one of a very few personal

235 Anthony J. Brown, Ill-Starred Captains: Flinders and Baudin (Hindmarsh, South Australia: Crawford House Publishing, 2000), p.285. In the following year, as well as moving the settlement to Sullivan’s Cove, now on Hobart’s waterfront, the Sydney Government sent another party of convicts to Tasmania, under the command of Colonel Paterson, to found a colony in the north of Tasmania. The position selected was near the entrance to Port Dalrymple. For eight years the small settlement at Port Dalrymple continued to exist in an independent state, until in 1812, it was placed under the charge of the Governor at Hobart Town [Hobart]. 236 Alison Alexander, Tasmania's Convicts: How Felons Built a Free Society (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2010), p.1. 237 Robert Francis Martin, Diary of the Voyage of the Asia, Arrived 7 December 1827, Tasmanian Archives, Hobart, dated 18 August, 1827. One of the ‘poor wretches’ on board this vessel was the convict artist William Buelow Gould. 238 Ron Radford and Jane Hylton, Australian Colonial Art: 1800–1900 (Adelaide: Art Gallery Board of South Australia, 1995), p.18. 239 John Mitchel, Jail Journal (Dublin: M. H. Gill and Son, Ltd, 19??), title page. 95 accounts written by a convict sentenced to transportation that survive.240 He wrote of the experience:

And I am on the first stage of my way, faring to what regions of unknown horror? And may never, never—never more, O, Ireland!—my mother and queen!—see vale, or hill, or murmuring stream of thine.241

One can only imagine that these same thoughts would have been on the minds of many of the convicts facing transportation. The utter despair of being exiled to the very ends of the Earth, as Mitchel says ‘to what regions of unknown horror’242— away from all loved ones, from all that you knew, all that was familiar— must have been overwhelming. While Mitchel was sentenced to transportation for fourteen years, sentences could range from seven years to life; but nearly every sentence was in effect a life sentence, for few of the convicts had the means to return to Britain once they had served their sentence.

The first convicts to arrive in Tasmania were put to work on government or military efforts to establish the new settlement. Arthur Philip, the first Governor of New South Wales (1788–1799), had established a system of labour for the new colony in which people, whatever their crime, were employed according to their skills—as brick makers, carpenters, servants, shepherds, or of course, on the road gangs. A similar system of employment was used in Tasmania, but as conditions changed and free settlers began to arrive, the convicts were also ‘assigned’ to work for these settlers. Meredith and Oxley write of this system of assignment:

Transportation to New South Wales ended under a cloud [in 1840], tainted—in the British imagination at least—as a form of slavery: convict servants were assigned to private masters in what was deemed a 'giant lottery' because good convicts might have bad masters who mistreated them, while bad convicts potentially had

240 Mitchel was sentenced to fourteen years transportation for ‘treason felony’. He was sent first to and then to Van Diemen’s Land, where he spent three years from 1850 to 1853, before escaping to the United States of America. 241 John Mitchel, Jail Journal (Dublin: M. H. Gill and Son, Ltd, 19??) John Mitchel’s journal on his transportation, first to Bermuda and then to Van Diemen’s Land, my emphasis, p.4. 242 John Mitchel, Jail Journal (Dublin: M. H. Gill and Son, Ltd, 19??), p.4. 96

masters that were altogether too lenient and undemanding. Convicts were unable freely to change masters, nor were assigned convicts paid for their labours’.243

Although most convicts were usually assigned arbitrarily, in Tasmania Lieutenant Governor George Arthur did assign convicts in special circumstances. One such case was in assigning William Buelow Gould to Dr James Scott, the Colonial Surgeon.244

William Buelow Gould

Who was William Buelow Gould (1801–1853) and how did he come to be exiled to Tasmania (Figure 38)?

Little is known of Gould’s early life—although it has been resolved that he was born William Holland, not Gould, in Liverpool—either in 1801 or 1803.245 The reason for his alias is not known. Nonie Sparkes Figure 38: William suggests, ‘It may have been a device to shield his first Buelow Gould, by Thomas Bock wife and family after his conviction for theft in 1826’.246 (1890–1855). However, Erica Burgess writes that, ‘Gould deserted his

243 David Meredith and Deborah Oxley, "Contracting Convicts: The Convict Labour Market in Van Diemen's Land 1840–1857.," Australian Economic History Review 45.1 (2005), pp.47–48. The change from assignment of convicts to probation gangs in Tasmania from 1840 will be discussed later in this thesis. 244 Garry Darby, William Buelow Gould: Convict Artist of Van Diemen's Land (Canberra: Copperfield Publishing Co. Pty. Limited, 1980), p.42. 245 See Tim Bonyhady, The Colonial Image: Australian Painting 1800–1880 (Chippendale, Australia: Ellsyd Press, 1987), Garry Darby, William Buelow Gould: Convict Artist of Van Diemen's Land (Canberra: Copperfield Publishing Co. Pty. Limited, 1980), Cameron Sparks, William Buelow Gould 1801–1853 (Sydney: Clune Galleries, 1968), Isabella Meade, "William Buelow Gould–Convict Artist in Van Diemen's Land," Paper and Proceedings of The Royal Society of Tasmania 93 (1959). 246 Cameron Sparks, William Buelow Gould 1801–1853 (Sydney: Clune Galleries, 1968), p.1. 97 wife and child in 1826, and took a new name, and left for Northampton’.247 While it is agreed he was born William Holland, there is no agreement about which William Holland he was. There are a couple of possibilities; he was the son of either James, a river pilot on the Mersey, and Ellen Holland,248 or Peter Holland, a Liverpool drawing master of that time.249 Given his later occupation as an artist, it would seem reasonable to assume that this second scenario is more likely.

As a youth, one of William Buelow Gould’s first jobs was as an artist with the German-born lithographer Rudolf Ackerman of the Strand.250 While Garry Darby asserts that, ‘Holland [Gould], at this time, could have had little if any artistic experience,’ he also notes that, ‘He [Ackerman] was not an engraver himself, but knew how to choose and encourage competent artists’.251 It seems unlikely that Gould would have found employment as an artist if he had no previous artistic training or experience. It is known that while working for Ackerman, Gould did study art, taking drawing lessons from R.A.252

247 Erica Claire Burgess, "A Conservation Study of the Paintings of William Buelow Gould (1801–1853)," 1989, p.5. 248 Garry Darby, William Buelow Gould: Convict Artist of Van Diemen's Land (Canberra: Copperfield Publishing Co. Pty. Limited, 1980), p.17. 249 Cameron Sparks, William Buelow Gould 1801–1853 (Sydney: Clune Galleries, 1968), p.1. 250 Robert Francis Martin, Diary of the Voyage of the Asia, Arrived 7 December 1827, Tasmanian Archives, Hobart, Henry Allport, Gould, William Buelow (1801–1853), 1966, Melbourne University Press, Available: http://adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A010428b.htm, 12 June 2011, Isabella Mead, "William Buelow Gould," Papers and Proceedings of The Royal Society of Tasmania 93 (1958), p.81. 251 Garry Darby, William Buelow Gould: Convict Artist of Van Diemen's Land (Canberra: Copperfield Publishing Co. Pty. Limited, 1980), p.18. 252 Robert Francis Martin, Diary of the Voyage of the Asia, Arrived 7 December 1827, Tasmanian Archives, Hobart, Isabella Meade, "William Buelow Gould–Convict Artist in Van Diemen's Land," Paper and Proceedings of The Royal Society of Tasmania 93 (1959), p.81. 98

Gould left London, returning to Liverpool with his wife, but he was unable to find employment there and moved to Burslem in Staffordshire where ‘he sought to put his artistic training to good use as a china decorator at the Spode pottery factory’. 253 Pam Wooliscroft writes, ‘The skill of these early ceramic artists is often underestimated. The painters were highly skilled and Figure 39: Spode produced a magnificent finished product showing china c. 1820. flowers ...’254

Figure 39 shows examples of the type of china produced at the Spode factory in the early 1820s when Gould would have been working there. The plate on the right in particular bears similarities in style to Gould’s later still life paintings. However, it is the example shown in Figure 40 that is of most interest. The artists at the Figure 40: Spode Spode factory also had access to Curtis’s Botanical pattern book. Magazine from the early 1800s, and ‘their patterns were at times influenced by the exotic blooms illustrated in this magazine.’255 The illustration from the Spode factory’s pattern book (Figure 40) indicates that Gould could have had considerable expertise as a botanical illustrator from his work at Spode. The styles also give an indication of what was popular at the time and what Gould’s customers in Tasmania were looking for in the commissions they gave him. These paintings will be discussed later in this section.

According to Darby, Gould left Staffordshire in the mid-1820s, deserting his wife and child, and moved to Northampton where, in 1826 he soon was employed by painter and glazier Thomas Smith. At this time, he appears to

253 Garry Darby, William Buelow Gould: Convict Artist of Van Diemen's Land (Canberra: Copperfield Publishing Co. Pty. Limited, 1980), p.19. 254 Pam Woolliscroft, "Flora Ceramica," Curtis Botanical Magazine (2002), p.190. 255 Pam Woolliscroft, "Flora Ceramica," Curtis Botanical Magazine (2002), p.198. 99 have changed his name from William Holland to William Buelow Gould.256 He had not been with Smith long before he was in trouble with the law.

On 19 August 1826, the Northampton Mercury257 reported Gould had been charged with having stolen paints and brushes belonging to Smith, and a waistcoat belonging to Thomas Freeman. Not long after his release, he was again arrested for theft—this time for stealing a greatcoat, handkerchief and gloves, the property of James Pearson. Gould’s luck had finally run out, he was sentenced to transportation to Tasmania. On 16 August 1827, he left England onboard the Asia bound for Hobart.258

During the voyage to Tasmania it became known that Gould was an artist and he was asked to draw or paint the portraits of a number of the officers onboard. The First Officer, Robert Francis Martin seems to have taken Gould under his wing and encouraged his artistic pursuits. However, Martin was not too pleased with his own portrait, ‘Gould finished my likeness. It is by no means a happy one. It is like me in one of my very worst humors, with a severe headache’.259 Martin later gave Gould ‘my old collection of oil colours for taking my likeness’.260 While on board Gould also painted botanical works and it seems his talent for natural history art was apparent even then. Martin wrote, ‘Gould busy flower painting for the doctor. Bespoke a group for my portfolio ... he seems to excel in flower painting’.261 Gould’s skill as a natural history artist would later be put to practice in Tasmania.

256 Garry Darby, William Buelow Gould: Convict Artist of Van Diemen's Land (Canberra: Copperfield Publishing Co. Pty. Limited, 1980), p.19. 257 Northampton Mercury 19 August, 1827, http://britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/search/results/1826-07-08/1826-09- 10?newspapertitle=northampton520mercury&sortorder, viewed 12 December, 2012. 258 Gould, William Buelow, Available: http://portal.archives.tas.gov.au, 12 December, 2012. 259 Robert Francis Martin, Diary of the Voyage of the Asia, Arrived 7 December 1827, Tasmanian Archives, Hobart. Dated 12 October, 1827. 260 Robert Francis Martin, Diary of the Voyage of the Asia, Arrived 7 December 1827, Tasmanian Archives, Hobart. 261 Robert Francis Martin, Diary of the Voyage of the Asia, Arrived 7 December 1827, Tasmanian Archives, Hobart. See also Garry Darby, William Buelow Gould: Convict Artist of Van Diemen's Land (Canberra: Copperfield Publishing Co. Pty. Limited, 1980), p.32, 100

Henry Allport (1890–1965), who owned a number of Gould’s paintings, including the famous Sketchbook of Fishes, now at the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts in Hobart wrote a biography of Gould noting:

In June 1829 he was sentenced to three years at Macquarie Harbour for passing a forged Derwent Bank note. He was sent in the brig . While weather-bound in Recherche Bay half the convicts mutinied and took the brig. The other convicts, including Gould, were marooned with the officers. Gould was one of a party which went overland to obtain help. Lieutenant-Governor (Sir) George Arthur ameliorated the sentences of the obedient convicts, and Gould was assigned to Dr James Scott [in Hobart], colonial surgeon.262

While Gould was assigned to Dr James Scott (1790–1837), an amateur naturalist, he had his first opportunity to work on natural history illustrations time since arriving in the colony.

William Buelow Gould assigned to Dr James Scott and Dr William de Little

William Buelow Gould completed all of his known natural history drawings while a convict, assigned to Dr James Scott (October 1829–August 1832) and Dr William de Little (August 1832–August 1833). After his release he appears not to have continued this line of illustration.

Scott, an enthusiastic amateur naturalist, sent articles—and Gould’s illustrations—home to England to have them published in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine, 1832, Volume 59, Articles 3145 and 3187.263 The articles were accompanied by illustrations of the plants described and the magazine’s editorial comments, ‘... some beautiful drawings made by Dr J Scott in Van

and Cameron Sparks, William Buelow Gould 1801–1853 (Sydney: Clune Galleries, 1968), p.2. 262 Henry Allport, Gould, William Buelow (1801–1853), 1966, Melbourne University Press, Available: http://adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A010428b.htm, 12 June 2011. 263 , "Article 3145," Curtis's Botanical Magazine VI (of the new series), vol 59 (1832), William Jackson Hooker, "Article 3187," Curtis's Botanical Magazine VI (of the new series), vol 59 (1832). 101

Diemen’s Land,’ and later, ‘... Our drawing was made from the living plant in Van Diemen’s Land, by Dr Scott..’.264 Gould’s illustrations (Figure 41) of Polygonum adpressum (top) and Calochilus campetris (bottom) were claimed by Scott as his own when they were sent to England.

These illustrations, as they appear in print, are noticeably different to other Gould original drawings held by QVMAG and the Allport. In William Buelow Gould: convict artist of Van Diemen’s Land, Garry Darby notes, ‘Although engraved for publication by another hand, these two beautiful botanical studies are no doubt the work of Gould, who for three years had been making Figure 41: such drawings for his master’.265 It is not unusual for a Illustration by Gould published engraving or lithograph to appear different to claimed by Scott. the watercolour original as the image is often rearranged

to fill the size requirements of the printed page.266

Whether Gould was aware that his illustrations had been published under Scott’s name is not known. However, it does reveal how convicts lost not only their freedom, their homelands, and their identity; it also shows the power dynamics of the convict/master relationship that was a part of the penal system. Mitchel wrote of this loss in his journal, ‘This book will help to remind me of what I was, and how I came down hither, and so preserve the continuity of my thought, or 'personal identity', which, there is sometimes reason to fear, might slip away from me’.267 It seems that, as a convict, Gould lost even the

264 William Jackson Hooker, "Article 3187," Curtis's Botanical Magazine VI (of the new series), vol 59 (1832). 265 Garry Darby, William Buelow Gould: Convict Artist of Van Diemen's Land (Canberra: Copperfield Publishing Co. Pty. Limited, 1980), p.44. 266 See Anita Hansen, "The Illustrations and Work of William Archer," Master of Fine Art, University of Tasmania, 2007. 267 John Mitchel, Jail Journal (Dublin: M. H. Gill and Son, Ltd, 19??), p.60. 102 right to his work, as his work belonged to the government official to whom he was assigned.

In sending Gould’s illustrations and his own descriptions of the plants back to the metropolitan centre, Scott maintained the paradigm set by the earlier expeditioners when their collections were brought back to the metropolitan centres of knowledge. Dr James Scott had arrived in Tasmania in 1820 as surgeon-superintendent. Although he lived in Tasmania, and would do so until his death in 1837, England was still home to him.

While assigned to Scott, Gould’s abilities as an illustrator gained some notoriety—in Tasmania at least. On 23 March 1833, the Hobart Town Chronicle noted:

It is not perhaps generally known that our Colonial Surgeon, Dr Scott, has one of the most splendid collections of inimitable drawings, not only of plants, but of most of the birds of the island hitherto discovered, among which are several hundred nondescripts. They are for the most part drawn and coloured by Gould…268

Soon others were also eager to take advantage of Gould’s expertise, among them was Robert Lawrence (1807–1833). Lawrence, of Formosa near Longford in the north of the island, was an early settler landholder who had an interest in the natural history of his adopted home. Like Scott, Lawrence also followed the practice of sending specimens from the periphery to the metropolis. He was one of the first Tasmanians to send botanical specimens to William Jackson Hooker, who was then at the and later became the Director of Kew Gardens.269 Burns and Skemp write of a possible link between Lawrence and William Buelow Gould in Van Diemen’s Land Correspondents when in May 1831 Lawrence wrote to Hooker:

268 Hobart Town Chronicle 23 March 1833. 269 TE Burns and JR Skemp, Van Diemen's Land Correspondents 1827–1849, The Records of the Queen Victoria Museum (Hobart: Queen Victoria Museum, 1961), p.18. 103

... The Governor has promised to lend me a man who is a capital delineator; if I succeed in getting him I will have drawings made of all the remarkable plants whose organs of fructification are complicated ... I should think the parts could be better dissected on the spot while the plant is yet living than after being dried and pressed.270

This exchange gives an indication of the use of convict labour to benefit the interests of the free settlers, and also the way in which convicts and their labour, in this case Gould’s artworks, were seen as a commodity. Lawrence was going to ‘borrow’ Gould to illustrate the plants he was collecting. These illustrations were then to be sent to William Hooker in Britain.271 The letter sent by Lawrence was dated May 1831, while Gould was still assigned to Scott. Lawrence was not successful in having Gould assigned to him, or working for him, for there is no record of illustrations being sent to Kew by Lawrence, nor is there any record of Gould being assigned to Lawrence. While assigned to Scott, Gould committed several more offences, including being drunk or unlawfully absent from his assignment. Eventually even Scott could no longer protect him and he was again sent to Macquarie Harbour, again thwarting Lawrence’s chance of having him assigned to him. Lawrence died in 1833 while Gould was still at Macquarie Harbour.272

At Macquarie Harbour, Gould was assigned to Dr William de Little in August 1832.273 In Treasures of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Yvonne Atkins writes, ‘it is said ‘De Little, had seconded him [Gould] from the water boat crew, without […] any reference to the Superintendent or Commandant,

270 TE Burns and JR Skemp, Van Diemen's Land Correspondents 1827–1849, The Records of the Queen Victoria Museum (Hobart: Queen Victoria Museum, 1961), p.17. 271 Later in Chapter 6, I will discuss the lack of acknowledgement of colonial artists in the metropolitan publications. 272 See Gould, William Buelow, Available: http://portal.archives.tas.gov.au, 12 December, 2012, for details of William Buelow Gould’s prison record while in Tasmania. 273 Archives, Tasmania. "Convict Records." Hobart. Vol. CON 31/1/15 (134). This volume is the Government account of Gould’s record as a convict. It gives details of all his misdemeanours and sentences. 104 to act as his official artist’.274 De Little, a student of natural history, had Gould illustrate the specimens he was collecting around Macquarie Harbour. Allport wrote, ‘Gould was again sentenced to Macquarie Harbour where he painted many more exquisite watercolours of flowers, birds and fishes’.275 A number of illustrations completed at this time are now in the collections of public institutions in Tasmania; Sketchbook of Fishes is at the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts and a number of botanical sketches; three sketchbooks of botanical studies are at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery. Two albums containing 92 illustrations, mainly ornithological studies, were sold at Christies in Melbourne in April 1992 to private collectors.276

William Buelow Gould’s natural history illustrations

The illustrations in the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts and Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery collections date from 1829 to 1833. Even the very earliest drawings show skill and a confidence that would seem to indicate Gould was an accomplished floral artist when he started working with Scott, especially when one considers he had not had the opportunity to draw during the two years before being assigned to Scott. While Robert Martin had criticised the portraits Gould painted onboard ship to Tasmania, he did note that he was an excellent floral artist. It should be remembered that on the exploration expeditions to Australia different artists were used for natural history or ethnographic illustrations; Lesueur and Petit, Parkinson and Buchan for example, and different training is required for the two genres. It is known that Gould worked at the Spode pottery factory where, as mentioned previously, there would have been more scope for floral painting.

274 Davey, Richard, The Sarah Island Conspiracies, Strahan, Tasmania, The Round Earth Company (2002), cited in Treasures of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, (Launceston, Tasmania: Foot & Playsted, c2006), p.62. 275 Henry Allport, Gould, William Buelow (1801–1853), 1966, Melbourne University Press, Available: http://adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A010428b.htm, 12 June 2011. 276 artnet, William Buelow Gould, 2011, Available: http://www.artnet.com/artists/lotdetailpage.aspx?lot_id=4DBC39B26D49C460, 31 August 2011. 105

Garry Darby asserts, ‘The confident young man must have spun a convincing tale to the people at the Spode pottery factory, for it is said that he was employed as an artist, painting decorations on the English ware that was famous throughout the world. He settled well to the

work which was not too demanding, even for an artist of his limited experience’.277 Gould’s expertise in his early botanical illustrations for Scott points to his having had a great deal of training and experience in floral painting

before being . There is no marked difference Figure 42: in style or skill between the illustrations completed for Comparison of illustration for Scott or de Little (Figure 42) that would indicate he James Scott and gained expertise from the naturalists Gould worked for, William de Little. as there was in Lesueur’s work when he began to work with Péron.

Unlike many of the artists who illustrated the publications of the exploration expeditions, Gould’s illustrations were made in situ using living or freshly collected specimens. The illustration titled Blue Flowers (Figure 43) is an example of this. In this drawing Gould

Figure 43: Blue shows the flower’s growing habit, the dense grouping, Flowers, William something that could never be known to an artist looking Buelow Gould. at a single herbarium specimen. Gould must have seen this living plant in its environment. 278

277 Garry Darby, William Buelow Gould: Convict Artist of Van Diemen's Land (Canberra: Copperfield Publishing Co. Pty. Limited, 1980), p.19. 278 The illustration bears the inscription ‘Macquarie Harbour, marshy ground’. Isabella Meade, and Burns and Skemp suggest that the inscriptions on many of Gould’s illustrations may have been added later by James Backhouse. Whatever the case, the words were certainly not written by Gould, for, in the same hand, on one illustration (Figure 47) is written, ‘the

existence of this is doubted’. Isabella Meade, "William Buelow Gould–Convict Artist in Van Diemen's Land," Paper and Proceedings of The Royal Society of Tasmania 93 (1959), p.87, TE Burns and JR Skemp, Van Diemen's Land Correspondents 1827–1849, The Records of the Queen Victoria Museum (Hobart: Queen Victoria Museum, 1961), p.17. 106

A comparison of Gould’s Correa reflexa with that of Redouté’s described previously shows the advantages of working in situ (Figure 43). The drawing by Gould (top) at the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts distinctly shows the long tubular flower typical of Figure 45: Detail Correa reflexa. The ‘decussate’ architecture of the from Correa reflexa. plant—that is, pairs of opposite leaves, each pair turned out at right angles to the succeeding pair—is more evident in Gould’s illustration.

In a number of his illustrations Gould does make some attempt to show aspects of the morphology (Figure 44) of the specimen he painted. Whether he had access to a

microscope or lens for dissections is not known, though it seems unlikely from the lack of detail in his insets. They certainly do not go to a cellular level as one would expect of an artist using a microscope.

Nor do we know the type or pallette of the watercolours used by Gould. Darby writes, ‘Scott must have been delighted with the results [of Gould’s illustrations]. He encouraged his convict servant by supplying him with the best available paint, brushes and paper’.279 It would seem likely that Gould also used paints supplied to him by de Little.

Figure 44: Correa

reflexa by Gould.

279 Garry Darby, William Buelow Gould: Convict Artist of Van Diemen's Land (Canberra: Copperfield Publishing Co. Pty. Limited, 1980), p.47. 107

The Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery collection

The Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Launceston has the largest collection of botanical illustrations by William Buelow Gould (Figure 46). The collection contains 177 beautiful studies, from three sketchbooks painted while Gould was assigned to Dr James Scott in Hobart and to Dr de Little at Macquarie Figure 46: Botanical Harbour. Yvonne Atkins writes, ‘Among the little- illustration, Queen Victoria Museum known treasures of the Museum [Queen Victoria and Art Gallery. Museum and Art Gallery] are a number of watercolour drawings of the convict artist William Buelow Gould of the native plants of Tasmania, painted between 1829 and 1833’.280

The story of the acquisition of these illustrations in 1958 bears testimony to the significance of these drawings and the intense interest in acquiring the early natural history art of Tasmania. Frank Ellis, the Director of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery at the time, wrote a summary of the collection to the Council with his proposal seeking funds for the purchase of the illustrations, which I will cite here in detail:

Collection of Floral Studies by W. B. Gould

… The first reference to these paintings was found in the old correspondence filed at the Museum where a letter dated 22nd October 1938, from the librarian of the British Museum mentions ‘four books of watercolour drawings of plants’ which are by W. B. Gould and asks for information concerning the artist. The books were, at the time owned by Reverend de B. Forbes of Devon. The reference was passed to Mrs I R Mead, late Director of this Museum, as she was engaged on a study of Gould and his career. She engaged the services of an historical records investigator who, after some difficulty, traced the present owner. This person was

280 Yvonne Adkins, "The Botanical Drawings of William Buelow Gould," Treasures of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (Launceston, Tasmania: Foot and Playsted, c2006), p.59. 108

asked, and agreed, to send the books out under offer to the Museum.

The collection is artistically interesting for it shows a delicacy not found in Gould’s more common oil paintings, which were probably ‘daubs’ produced for money or drinks.

The pictures bear names and comments in a hand almost certainly that of James Backhouse,281 the Quaker missionary. Many of the specimens come from the present location of Clemes House of the Friends’ School, New Town, Hobart.282

Interest in purchasing the botanical illustrations had been gathering for some time, instigated by Isabella Meade and her researches into Gould. By the beginning of 1958, Frank Ellis and Isabella Meade were in communication on the mechanics of organising the purchase. It had been established that the paintings were now in the possession of Miss E. Hugh-Smith, who, for financial reasons was willing to sell.283 On 22 January 1958, Frank Ellis wrote again to Isabella Meade concerning the sale. He expresses his concerns regarding the amount to offer for the sketchbooks and the apprehension that, if knowledge of their existence began widely known, other organisations, particularly the Mitchell Library, could also try to purchase the paintings and possibly outbid the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery.284 Miss Hugh- Smith was offered a sum of £120 Sterling, which she accepted. On 27 June

281 James Backhouse (1794–1869) a Quaker missionary and keen naturalist arrived in Tasmania in 1832 where he remained for three years. He also visited New South Wales, but returned to Tasmania in 1837, and left later the same year. James Backhouse worked on convict reform and the plight of the Tasmanian Aboriginals. He also sent botanical specimens to Kew Gardens. Mary Bartram Trott, Backhouse, James (1794–1869), Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, Available: http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/backhouse-james-1728/text1899, 5 September 2011. 282 Frank Ellis, Letters Regarding the Purchase of William Buelow Gould Botanical Illustrations . 283 6 June Hugh-Smith, 1958, Director Frank Ellis, Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery 284 Ellis 22 January 1958, Frank, Director Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Isabella Meade. 109

1958, the Town Clerk of the City of Launceston informed Ellis that the Council had authorised the purchase.285

Frank Ellis asserts that the specimens came from the present location of Clemes House in Hobart—New Figure 47: Pink tall plant, Allport Town—not far from where James Scott lived at Boa Library and Museum Vista. Did Buelow, Scott and Backhouse work together of Fine Arts. on the specimens and illustrations? James Backhouse arrived in Tasmania in February 1832286 while Gould was still assigned to Scott. Burns and Skemp note that, ‘The drawings of plants made when he [Gould] was with Dr Scott (many of them named by James Backhouse) found their way to England’.287 If Backhouse took the illustrations back to England with him, it does not explain how the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery collection has drawings Gould completed while working with de Little.

How did illustrations from both Scott’s and de Little’s collections come to be together with Reverend de B. Forbes in England in 1938? The Tasmanian Archives does not have any reference to Reverend de B. Forbes, so it would seem he did not collect them in Tasmania, and must have come by them in England.

The Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery purchased three sketchbooks. What happened to the fourth book mentioned in the 1938 letter? It has been suggested that the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts collection [discussed below] may be from the fourth book, but that does not explain how

285 City of Launceston ClerkTown, Director Frank Ellis, Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery. 286 Mary Bartram Trott, Backhouse, James (1794–1869), Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, Available: http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/backhouse-james-1728/text1899, 5 September 2011. 287 TE Burns and JR Skemp, Van Diemen's Land Correspondents 1827–1849, The Records of the Queen Victoria Museum (Hobart: Queen Victoria Museum, 1961), p.17. 110 that collection also has work Gould completed while assigned to both Scott and de Little.

How did the botanical, marine and ornithological sketchbooks Gould completed while assigned to de Little get separated? Henry Allport purchased the Sketchbook of Fishes, but not the book of bird illustrations that was later sold at Christie’s in 1992. Although Henry Allport’s 1966 biography of Gould288 mentions that he completed ornithological studies, Frank Ellis was either unaware of these, or did not believe they were extant in 1958.289

The Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts

The State Library of Tasmania’s Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts collection of Gould natural history illustrations contains the famous Sketchbook of Fishes as well as a collection of botanical illustrations attributed to William Buelow Gould. The Sketchbook of Fishes was part of the collection bequeathed to the people of Tasmania by Henry Allport, and the botanical paintings were purchased from funds provided by the Allport Bequest.

In 2002, the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts purchased a set of thirteen botanical illustrations for their collection. The dates of the drawings indicate they were completed while Gould was working for both Drs James Scott and William de Little. The illustrations are dated by the State Library of Tasmania as follows;

288 Henry Allport, Gould, William Buelow (1801–1853), 1966, Melbourne University Press, Available: http://adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A010428b.htm, 12 June 2011. 289 These questions cannot be answered here in this thesis, but would make for interesting further research into William Buelow Gould’s history. 111

 five are undated,  three dated as possibly 1827–183? o [assigned to Dr James Scott],  one dated 1831 o [assigned to Dr James Scott],

 one dated ca.1830–40, Figure 48: Melaleuca squamata  and three dated 1832–1833 1831. o [assigned to Dr William de Little].

The three dated 1832–33 are attributed thus: ‘it is possible that the plant was painted during this period [when Gould was assigned to de Little]’. One of the illustrations dated 1827–3? (Figure 49) is described, ‘Kennedia prostrata, possibly grown or was painted at

Boa Vista [home of Scott]’. Kennedia prostrata Figure 49: Kennedia prostrata 1827–3? (common name Running Postman), a native ground

cover of Tasmania, grows naturally in the eastern half of the island, and not on the west coast, making it more likely this specimen was painted while Gould was assigned to Scott. The illustration of Melaleuca squamata (Figure 48) is dated 1831 when Gould was assigned to Scott.

The botanical illustrations in the State Library of Tasmania and the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery are significant, being among the earliest sketches of the State’s flora by an artist living in the colony. The reappropriation of Gould’s botanical sketches by public institutions in Tasmania is an indication of the significance natural history art has to this settler society’s sense of their own history.

Sketchbook of Fishes

The illustrations in this small sketchbook are arguably the most significant natural history illustrations created in Tasmania. They are iconic representatives of the State. Gould and his sketchbook were immortalised in

112

the award-winning novel Gould’s Book of Fish by Tasmanian author .290 The sketchbook has also recently been recognised as a document of world significance when, in the beginning of April Figure 51: Freshwater crayfish. 2011, it was inscribed on the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register. For historic material, it is the equivalent of World Heritage Listing.

While assigned to Dr de Little at Macquarie Harbour, Gould painted the Sketchbook of Fishes from specimens

collected by de Little along the beaches of Sarah Island.291 This exquisite collection of 35 watercolours featuring marine life of highlights his outstanding artistic abilities at that time. Figure 50: Astacopsis gouldi (top), Astacopsis Figure 50 is of the freshwater crayfish featured in the tricornis (bottom). Sketchbook of Fishes. Although this illustration is titled Astacopsis gouldi on the State Library of Tasmania website, Dr. Brita Hansen suggests it is rather an illustration of Astacopsis tricornis (Figure 51).292

290 Australian Broadcasting Commission, Book Puts Tasmania on World Stage, 2011, Available: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/04/02/3180515.htm?section=entertainment, 4 April 2011, Richard Flanagan, Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish (Sydney: Pan Macmillan Australia, 2001). 291 Garry Darby, William Buelow Gould: Convict Artist of Van Diemen's Land (Canberra: Copperfield Publishing Co. Pty. Limited, 1980), p.54. 292 “This is Astacopsis tricornis ... the location [Macquarie Harbour] alone means it should be. Astacopsis gouldi is confined to streams and creeks flowing into Bass Strait, although there is a population near the Pieman River and even near the Huon, but these two are transplanted, and probably would not have been there at the time this was painted [1832– 1833]. Astacopsis gouldi has a ridge running down the middle of the rostrum, which is not shown ... I doubt Gould was not observant enough to put that in. Astacopsis tricornis does not have a spine, but the rostrum has several sharp spines along the edges, as does this specimen. It is also in the right locality. The only other possibility for the size would be Astacopsis franklinii, which can occasionally get that big, however that is not found on the west coast either. There is a bit of an overlap at the edges of the ranges in central Tasmania. Franklinii does not have spines along the rostrum, only one at the very end. 113

There are no known examples of Gould’s preparatory sketches for his finished illustration, so it is not possible to comment on his method, whether he made quick sketches in situ or not, for example. Figure 52 from the Figure 52: Flounder Sketchbook of Fishes of the top and under view of a by WB Gould. flounder is possibly the most unfinished of his fish drawings, but it gives no real indication of his working method.

While the sketchbook is part of the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts collection at the State Library of Tasmania along with the botanical sketches previously mentioned, there are few examples of Gould’s other work in that collection. The State Library of Tasmania’s website notes that:

One of the most important collection themes for the Allport is natural history ... in recent years several rare books (and single plates from others) have been purchased, depicting birds, mammals, flowers and fish.293

During the period from 1996 to 2012, ‘192 books, pamphlets, maps and photographs, 150 paintings, drawings, prints and sketchbooks and twenty-one objects have been added to the All port Library and Museum of Fine Arts’ collections. They have been acquired by donation or direct purchase from individuals, from rare book and antique dealers and at auction. Many of them have already been displayed in the twenty-eight exhibitions presented in Allport since 1996.’294

So I suggest it is Astacopsis tricornis because: - the locality - lack of a central rostrum ridge - spines along the sides of the rostrum”. Dr Brita Hansen, Crayfish to Identify, 31 August 2011, Anita Hansen. 293 The Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, State Library of Tasmania, Available: http://www.linc.tas.gov.au/tasmaniasheritage/browse/exhibitions/fancybuyingthat/whatdow ecollect/naturalhistory, 13 December, 2012. 294 The Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, State Library of Tasmania, Available: http://www.linc.tas.gov.au/tasmaniasheritage/browse/exhibitions/fancybuyingthat/whatdow ecollect/naturalhistory, 13 December, 2012. 114

Natural history illustration and landscape art

While both Scott and de Little had a gentlemanly interest in natural history common in the early nineteenth century, it is worthy of note that they had Gould paint the strange fauna and flora contained in the exotic landscape rather than the landscape itself.

Of landscape art, John Crowley asserts, ‘during the British invasion, occupation, and colonisation of New France [Canada], artists appropriated the conquests visually with topographic renderings of the empire's new landscapes’.295 He goes on to say that in the northern Americas the scenic landscape they painted, ‘sent a visual message—to the king, ministers and aristocrats, parliamentary politicians, fellow officers and officials, their families, the viewing public at exhibitions—about a landscape whose scenic attractions and rustic tranquillity mitigated its appropriation by conquest’.296 He further argues, ‘Humphry Repton, Britain’s foremost landscape architect in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, forthrightly asserted that aesthetically motivated ‘appropriation’ naturalized landowning and absolved it from charges of exploitation’.297

In this concept of the visual appropriation of land by the act of landscape painting lies a fundamental, and intrinsic, distinction for the motives behind the use of natural history art by the military and convicts in the early Tasmanian experience. It is one that I contend explains the significance placed upon natural history art in Australian museum, library and art gallery collections; a significance that is not found in similar collections of other countries with the possible exception of New Zealand. The early landscape painters of the North American colonies painted for an audience that looked

295 John E. Crowley, "'Taken on the Spot': The Visual Appropriation of New France for the Global British Landscape," The Canadian Historical Review 86.1, March (2005), p.1. 296 John E. Crowley, "'Taken on the Spot': The Visual Appropriation of New France for the Global British Landscape," The Canadian Historical Review 86.1, March (2005), p.4. 297 John E. Crowley, "'Taken on the Spot': The Visual Appropriation of New France for the Global British Landscape," The Canadian Historical Review 86.1, March (2005), p.4. 115 upon these lands as a place to settle, a place where land ownership was possible; and was in fact the reason for conquest, for colonisation.

In the Australian colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, the military officials who had William Buelow Gould paint for them had no thought or aspiration of private individual land ownership. They were in a penal colony. Their painter was a prisoner; a prisoner sentenced to exile in a far-flung colony with arguably no personal attachment to his new surroundings. Far from family and home, he had no ideas, nor possibility, of owning the land he saw around him. The military conquerors, not viewing the landscape as an asset to appropriate for private ownership—in the sense of settling the land to farm, to build their homes—did not conceive of it with the same sense of belonging that their North American counterparts had done. They did not imagine the colony as their centre; it would always remain a peripheral colonial outpost for them. Tasmania was just another detachment where they would serve for some time before returning home.

Gould did paint some landscapes for his gaolers, but they were not the melodramatic ‘Manifest Destiny’ paintings of a Promised Land characteristic of the North Figure 53: Sarah American paintings of appropriation. They appear more Island, Macquarie Harbour (1833), like a modern day snapshot. ‘Look, this is where I’m William Buelow working!’(Figure 53). A scene to send home to show as Gould. a curiosity, or a later reminder of time spent in a faraway colony. Allport states dryly in his biography of Gould, ‘His sketches of Macquarie Harbour itself provide a unique topographical record of the settlement’.298 However, unlike the topographical sketches of the pre-European settlement expeditioners, Gould’s landscapes show the uneasy marks of colonisation on the land.

298 Henry Allport, Gould, William Buelow (1801–1853), 1966, Melbourne University Press, Available: http://adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A010428b.htm, 12 June 2011. 116

Sarah Island, Macquarie Harbour by Gould shows a bleak landscape with a threatening sky above. The island, itself, has been almost entirely deforested and subjugated by the penal settlement depicted. There is no alien wilderness left to fear on the island. It is a fortress prison; a prison that could visually be almost anywhere. Two isolated figures appear in a row-boat in the foreground. They are neither heading toward the island nor away from it—stuck in a strange kind of limbo—trapped halfway between the prison island and the mainland. This is not a landscape of ownership or belonging, nor one of a bright, promised future. Nor does it appear to be a place one would find the un- named exotic native flowers that Gould was painting for de Little. As this landscape was obviously painted from the nearby mainland, it is likely that Gould and de Little would have botanised together on the mainland, and this is where the botanical specimens were collected.

As noted, many of the early colonisers of Tasmania, especially the military gaolers, saw the landscape they encountered as an alien, evil wilderness to be feared, and

Figure 54: Hooker to be tamed. This differs again dramatically from the and company view of the colonisers of the North Americas who saw journeying through the wilderness from the land as a God-given new homeland to be taken as Plymouth to their right. Haynes asserts this in Tasmanian Visions Hartford, 1636. (1846), Frederick when she writes: Edwin Church. The Pilgrim Fathers saw the New World wilderness in these terms —a testing by God preparatory to settlement in 'their' Promised Land. This is epitomised visually in the 1846 blockbuster painting by American artist Frederick Church, Hooker and company journeying through the wilderness from Plymouth to Hartford, 1636 (Figure 54).299

Haynes then continues to explain how this view of appropriating the land with Divine sanction led to what has been termed ‘Manifest Destiny’:

299 Roslynn Haynes, "From Habitat to Wilderness: Tasmania's Role in the Politicising of Place," Disputed Territories: Land, Culture and Identity in Settler Societies, eds. David Trigger and Gareth Griffiths (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, c2003), p.84. 117

the phrase 'Manifest Destiny' which came to be applied to a school of art, derived from the words of a New York editor who wrote that it was America's 'manifest destiny' to overspread and possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self- government entrusted to 'us'.300

The alien wilderness of Australia and, for the purposes of this thesis, Tasmania was so new and so strange it also defied the ability of the landscape artists to paint it, as Crowley points out, ‘The picturesque style simultaneously created differences (topographically) and familiarity (aesthetically) among imperial spaces in ways that naturalized their appropriation as British rather than alien environments’.301 This familiarity could not apply to the Tasmanian landscape, and the first Europeans were confounded by the alien landscape. Thomas Watling (1762–?), a former convict of New South Wales, wrote in Letters from an Exile of his inability to come to terms with the alien landscape he confronted in Australia, stating, ‘the air, the sky, the land, are objects entirely different from all that a ‘Briton’ has been accustomed to see before’.302 Ross Gibson proposes that Watling, with his inability to perceive the land before him, could not metaphorise the landscape, having no known reference, and therefore, ‘adopts the metonymic—or—realist mode of writing’. 303 The Tasmanian landscape was also still too alien to conform to the imagination of the colonisers.

300 Roslynn Haynes, "From Habitat to Wilderness: Tasmania's Role in the Politicising of Place," Disputed Territories: Land, Culture and Identity in Settler Societies, eds. David Trigger and Gareth Griffiths (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, c2003), p.84. 301 John E. Crowley, "'Taken on the Spot': The Visual Appropriation of New France for the Global British Landscape," The Canadian Historical Review 86.1, March (2005), p.6. 302 John Watling, Letter from an Exile at , to His Aunt in Dumfies (Penrith: 1794). 303 Ross Gibson, "This Prison, This Language: Thomas Watling's 'Letters from an Exile at Botany Bay' (1794)," Island in the Stream: Myths of Place in Australian Culture, ed. Paul Foss (Leichhardt, NSW: Pluto Press, 1988), pp.24–25. 118

Nevertheless, though Hewson, Manning Clark304 and others maintain the Tasmanian landscape was seen as hostile and alien by the early Europeans who encountered it, some now question that view. According to James Boyce, while the early settlers admired the pasture-like landscape they encountered in parts of Tasmania, the reaction to:

the less accessible wet sclerophyll forest is harder to gauge—they were admired from a distance but most Britons were fearful of closer contact. After two millenia of forest clearing in Britain, by the early nineteenth century wild woods had become familiar places and the dense forests of Van Diemen’s Land were generally avoided.305

Boyce posits another possible view. He maintains that this hostile reading of the landscape has been based on a twentieth century assumption of Australia being one cohesive entity, with Tasmania ‘increasingly absorbed into a post- federation national narrative’306—forgetting Tasmania is an island with a vastly different environment to that of the mainland. Boyce asserts:

The British conquest of Van Diemen’s Land … challenges us to hear an alternative settler experience of Australia. At least as far as the land was concerned … there were no cries of ‘horror’ or ‘disappointment’ from new arrivals. The island was not experienced as ‘harsh’ or ‘barbaric’... For the majority of the population the land was not a cursed place of darkness but a refuge from the horror imposed by ‘civilised human beings’.307

Boyce points out that, the convicts transported to Tasmania ‘were unwilling invaders, and that they were also exiles who had forfeited even the dream of going home’,308 and while the dense wilderness areas were feared, the open

304 C.M.H. Clark, Occasional Writing and Speeches (Melbourne: 1980) Cited in James Boyce, "Return to Eden: Van Diemen's Land and the Early British Settlement of Australia," Environment and History 14 (2008), p.291. 305 James Boyce, Van Diemen's Land (Melbourne: Black Inc, 2008). 306 James Boyce, "Return to Eden: Van Diemen's Land and the Early British Settlement of Australia," Environment and History 14 (2008), p.292. 307 James Boyce, "Return to Eden: Van Diemen's Land and the Early British Settlement of Australia," Environment and History 14 (2008), p.292. 308 James Boyce, "Return to Eden: Van Diemen's Land and the Early British Settlement of Australia," Environment and History 14 (2008). 119 parklike landscape of Tasmania welcomed the early settlers. This argument, and that of Alison Alexander on the lack of long-term spiritual wounds relating to Tasmania’s convict past,309 could also be a factor in Tasmanian’s attachment to the state’s fauna and flora.

Another view of the landscape has been put forward by Radford and Hylton when they note:

it was not the unfamiliar, and to them unremarkable, landscape that interested the first convict and non-convict amateur artists of Australia. The over-riding fascination was with the unique flora and fauna. These images fill sketchbooks and journals for most of the first two decades of settlement. Most such drawings and watercolours were intended to be sent back to a curious Britain; the Government's dispatches often enclosed natural history sketches.310

While the early settlers and government officials were interested in natural history art, Gould was unable to make his living in this field after his release. Gould was given his at Port Arthur on 25 June 1835. In November 1836 he married Susan (Amy) Reynolds, a fellow convict he had met while assigned to Scott in Hobart some years earlier.311 After he gained his freedom, painting became his sole source of income. Allport wrote, ‘In the next years he painted many game, fish and flower studies in oils, some good, some indifferent. He became a confirmed drunkard and, between sentences, lived with his wife and family in abject poverty’.312 Gould was unable to gain patronage to continue his natural history illustration as a free man, as the colonial officials to whom he had been assigned as a convict, seemed

309 Alison Alexander, "The Legacy of the Convict System," Tasmanian Historical Studies 6.1 (1998). 310 Ron Radford and Jane Hylton, Australian Colonial Art: 1800–1900 (Adelaide: Art Gallery Board of South Australia, 1995), p.18. 311 Archives Tasmania, Available: http://digital.statelibrary.tas.gov.au:1801/view/action/nmets.do?CON52/1/1 p.15, 12 December 2012, Treasures of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, (Launceston, Tasmania: Foot & Playsted, c2006), p.64. 312 Henry Allport, Gould, William Buelow (1801–1853), 1966, Melbourne University Press, Available: http://adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A010428b.htm, 12 June 2011. 120

unwilling to pay him to illustrate for them after his release. Although there was a lively interest in natural history in the colony at the time, many of the early settlers drew their own illustrations. Figure 56: Still life

by Gould.

Still life paintings

William Buelow Gould is, perhaps, best known for his still life paintings and portraits.313 Garry Darby notes, ‘He was the only painter in either Sydney or Hobart to

specialise in still life paintings’,314 over 60 of which are Figure 55: Birds, 315 William Buelow known to exist. Gould rarely included the native flora Gould. of Tasmania in his still life oils (Figure 55), as it would

appear his clients wanted reminders of their home in England, and needed to surround themselves with familiar scenes.

Figure 58: Spode There is also something reminiscent of the Spode pottery plate. pottery plates in his floral still life painting—a mark of the period when he worked there earlier in the century (Figure 56).

While there are no examples of Gould’s ornithological Figure 57: Game– illustrations in collections of the Tasmanian cultural Still life with birds, institutions, a number of his still life paintings do William Buelow Gould. contain images of native Tasmanian birds. These paintings, although macabre by today’s standards, being

313 William Buelow Gould painted a number of portraits, including some of Tasmanian Aboriginals. I do not include examples of these paintings in my thesis as the topic has been covered in some detail by other writers. 314 Garry Darby, William Buelow Gould: Convict Artist of Van Diemen's Land (Canberra: Copperfield Publishing Co. Pty. Limited, 1980), p.14. 315 Cameron Sparks, William Buelow Gould 1801–1853 (Sydney: Clune Galleries, 1968), p.1. 121

images of groups of dead birds, show Gould’s skill as a bird illustrator, a skill he would have used while working with James Scott and William de Little. Figure 57 shows a collection of Tasmanian native birds, among Figure 59: Fish on a them; doves, parrots and finches or wrens. A rifle rests Blue and White on the table above which the birds are hung. Among the Plate, William birds in the collection are some so tiny, it is hard to Buelow Gould. believe they were hunted solely for food. The illustration Game—Still Life with Birds (Figure 58) painted in 1836 is unusual in being a watercolour on paper rather than an oil painting as are nearly all of Gould’s other still life paintings. In this painting Gould shows a few loose feathers next to the birds—the contents of a recently emptied bag of the day’s hunt—lying on a surface, perhaps a table that the viewer is looking down onto. Is this reminiscent of Gould’s earlier natural history art? An example of a collection Scott or de Little would have brought for him to use for his illustrations.

It must not be forgotten that his ornithological illustrations would most certainly have been drawn from dead specimens, and when Péron wrote, ‘M. Lesueur also set off, to go hunting in the woods ... he brought back twelve species of birds, three of them parrots, and the pretty tit with blue head and neck …’,316 he is referring to a collection similar to that Gould has painted in the illustrations above.

Gould’s previous experience as a natural history illustrator of fish is highlighted in his still life Fish on a Blue and While Plate (Figure 59). This painting shows a

humorous side to Gould not seen in his other paintings. Figure 60: Still life with Game and Fish, A small fly sits on one of the newly caught fish that are William Buelow Gould. ready to be cleaned after a successful fishing trip. The

316 François Péron, Louis de Freycinet and Christine Cornell, Voyage of Discovery to the Southern Lands: Books I to Iii, trans. Christine Cornell (Adelaide: Friends of the State Library of South Australia, 2006), pp.179–180. 122 still life Game and Fish (undated) (Figure 60) is noteworthy as it features only European freshwater fish. This painting, according to Green Auctioneer’s lot description contains, ‘European freshwater species including Perch, Roach, Brown Trout and Pike (the latter have never been introduced to Australia).317 The bird species are not identified. Did Gould paint these European fish from illustrated books or another painting? He certainly would not have had specimens before him to paint. Like the floral still life paintings that feature only European flowers, this painting shows the early settler’s longing for familiar images, reminders of their far away home, when decorating their dwellings in Tasmania.

William Buelow Gould’s landscape paintings

A few examples of landscape painting by Gould after his release do exist (Figure 61). Painted in 1838, the title of the painting, Imaginary River Scene, a part of the

Crowther Collection at the State Library of Tasmania, Figure 61: Imaginary River Hobart is quite telling. Gould’s landscapes do not Scene, William display the pride of ownership of the later John Glover318 Buelow Gould. landscapes. His painting is of an imaginary river scene, although it is reputed to be of the River Derwent in Hobart.319 This painting displays no sense of belonging, no sense of place. It is an imagined space; imagined to resemble something more like home—an English scene, not a Tasmanian one. A lone eucalypt stands forlornly in the foreground, the last sad remnant of wilderness. A tree stump, the dead remains of another, dominates the foreground, an eerie symbol of the progress of human settlement on the land. Could this tree stump represent the ‘destitute’ that Raimonda Modiano

317 From the website of Moss Green Auctioneers, http://www.mossgreen.co.au/auctions/artwork-detail,asp?idimage=22462. The auctioneers write, ‘We are most grateful to Nicola McColl and specialist staff at the Museum of Victoria for this information”. The painting was auctioned at Ross, Tasmania on 7 December 2008. 318 John Glover’s landscape paintings will be discussed in the next chapter. 319 Garry Darby, William Buelow Gould: Convict Artist of Van Diemen's Land (Canberra: Copperfield Publishing Co. Pty. Limited, 1980), p.111. 123 refers to in her essay The Legacy of the Picturesque: landscape, property and the ruin.320 Has this tree stump replaced a human figure, for, after all, in this case, the painter, Gould, is himself the destitute so often featured in picturesque landscape paintings.321 As we investigate the painting further, we see in the distance rugged cliffs and the suggestion of some still forested areas on the hills. Also in the background are the signs of human habitation. Like the painting of Sarah Island before, a boat is suspended in limbo, neither going towards the town in the distance, nor towards the countryside in the foreground. Unlike the North American ‘Manifest Destiny’ landscapes, there is no human figure pointing towards the promise of future progress of the township, or to a bright future. It is as though Gould, himself does not know where he belongs.

In describing Thomas Cole’s North American landscape painting The Oxbow (Figure 62) Cronin writes:

The painting’s most striking compositional device is of

course the powerful diagonal that divides the landscape into Figure 62: The two quite different—indeed, opposing halves. To the left is Oxbow, Thomas Cole. the wilderness that Cole himself had pioneered as a central subject for American art...322

Gould’s diagonal—lacking Cole’s dramatic sweep—divides the landscape, not into a dominant wilderness, but a destroyed wilderness tamed by the colonisers in their attempt to make it into a representation of their homeland.

Our eyes are swept downward from the stormclouds by the leaning tree ... If the left half of the painting represents wilderness, the right half represents civilization. A pastoral landscape has emerged

320 Raimonda Modiano, "The Legacy of the Picturesque: Landscape, Property and the Ruin," The Politics of the Picturesque, eds. Stephen Copley and Peter Garside (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 321 See Christopher S. Wood, Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape (London: Reaktion Books Ltd., 1993), and the World War I paintings (for example, We are making a new world, 1918) of Paul Nash (1889–1946) for more on the anthropomorphism of the landscape in painting. 322 William Cronon, "Telling Tales on Canvas: Landscapes of Frontier Change," Discovered Lands, Invented Pasts: Transforming Visions of the American West, ed. Jules David (New Haven Yale University Press, 1992), p.40. 124

along the banks of the river, the Connecticut. From our bird’s-eye view we can easily survey the gentle lives of a prosperous agricultural countryside below. Sheep graze in a pasture ... and boatmen going about their work—work that is in fact the real subject of this painting.323

In his imagined river scene, Gould does not paint ‘the gentle lives of a prosperous agricultural countryside’. The tamed wilderness in the foreground does not appear to be used by the inhabitants, no sheep graze, nor do farmers till the soil; a road travels up from the river, the only sign that perhaps people venture there. Cole in his work asks us to focus our attention, not on the people themselves, but on what they have done to the land. They have made it their own.

Here lies the heart of Gould’s landscape, or perhaps, more accurately, his lack of heart. He does not show a transformation of ownership. His landscape is devoid of any sense of belonging. The landscape has been changed, but he does not feel at home in it. He does not see the transformation of a wilderness to a place people have made their own. He paints only an imagined landscape that he tries to make appear familiar, more like home. While William Cronon asserts, ‘Cole was explicit in his admiration for this river valley ... And yet Cole was not completely sanguine even about this beautiful countryside. The human progress it recorded was as yet incomplete, so that no-one could say how far it might finally proceed’.324 Gould does not censure or admire the changes he notes in the solitary remnant of wilderness, he merely records it.

Gould’s landscape paintings were always reminiscent of an English landscape. He never truly came to terms with the Tasmanian landscape. When William Buelow Gould died on 11 December 1853 in Hobart, he had never left his

323 William Cronon, "Telling Tales on Canvas: Landscapes of Frontier Change," Discovered Lands, Invented Pasts: Transforming Visions of the American West, ed. Jules David (New Haven Yale University Press, 1992), p.40. 324 William Cronon, "Telling Tales on Canvas: Landscapes of Frontier Change," Discovered Lands, Invented Pasts: Transforming Visions of the American West, ed. Jules David (New Haven Yale University Press, 1992), p.42. 125 place of exile. The convict William Buelow Gould and his work is closely linked with the history of the colony to which he was exiled. He was born at the same time Van Diemen’s Land became a penal settlement, and he died in same year that Van Diemen’s Land became Tasmania. During his lifetime Tasmania saw: European settlement as a penal colony, the cessation of transportation, the arrival of free settlers, and finally gain responsible government.

However, while Gould could not make his living painting the botanical and zoological illustrations at which he excelled, interest in the colony’s natural history continued. The early settlers of the colonies who had an interest in natural history wanted to re-create the intellectual and institutional foundations of their homeland. European scientists were still interested in the colony’s unique fauna and flora.

Scientific interest in Tasmania

By studying the natural history of their new home, the settlers became more familiar with the new plants and animals. In doing so they also became more comfortable with their new environment; and it is argued that they would also begin to form a sense of belonging to that place.

Notwithstanding being very few in number, the early Tasmanian free settlers and colonial officials established their own scientific societies within 30 years of arriving in the colony. Between 1829 and 1832 the Van Diemen's Land Scientific Society helped confirm the island as the centre for scientific activity, within the Australian region, for the next fifteen to twenty years.325 Colonists met to discuss new curiosities found on the island. Papers were presented and even published in local journals; libraries were established to provide the colonists with the latest scientific discussions.

325 Michael Edward Hoare, ""All Things Are Queer and Opposite": Scientific Societies in Tasmania in the 1840s," Isis 60.2 (1969), p.199. 126

During this time of early settlement, scientific expeditions visited the fledgling colony: in 1825 Hyacinthe Bouganville, 1831 Cyrille-Pierre-Théodore Laplace, in 1827 and 1836 Dumont d'Urville. Of course, the most famous expedition to visit the island was that of Charles Darwin in 1836. Thomas Cécille visited the island in 1837.

The interest in scientific investigation in Tasmania, and international interest in Tasmania would also take a great leap forward with the appointment of the next Lieutenant Governor of the colony in January 1837—John Franklin (1786–1847).

Military rule and free settlers

The convicts arriving in Tasmania were sent from the colony of New South Wales. From 1812, convicts were being sent directly to Tasmania from Britain, however, they were also arriving from New South Wales. Tasmania was still an outpost of the New South Wales colony, governed by that colony until 1825, when Tasmania was proclaimed an independent colony. The Imperial Government instituted Executive and Legislative Councils,326 that is, the Governor of the colony appointed representatives in these Councils.

Between 1824 and 1836 Governor George Arthur was an oppressive ruler of Tasmania who controlled the colony in large part by a powerful and numerous police force, making Tasmania one of the most heavily policed places in the world at that time.327 While the majority of Tasmania’s population would remain convicts or their gaolers for many years, the arrival of free settlers soon presented problems to the military rulers of the colony. These free settlers

326 Ure Smith, Picturesque Atlas of Australasia: Facsimile Ed., Cover Title: Australia: The First Hundred Years, Being a Fascimilie of Volumes I & Ii of the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia, 1888. Originally Published in 3 V.: Sydney, Picturesque Atlas Publishing Co., 1886–88 (Sydney: 1974), p.498. 327 Stefan Petrow, "After Arthur: Policing in Van Diemen's Land 1827–46," Policing the Lucky Country, eds. M. Enders and B. Dupont (Sydney: Hawkins Press, 2001). 127 began to agitate for representation in the Councils of the colony, and also for the cessation of transportation.

Review

The first Europeans to live in Tasmania were exiles from the European centre, forced to the antipodean periphery as convicts or their gaolers. Not only were the convicts forced outcasts in the settlement, the majority of them had no hopes of returning to their homelands. As such, many would have had no sense of belonging to this new, alien land, unlike the North American settlers, who saw their land as a promised land.

This antipodean land, unlike the North America’s, was also very alien and different that they could not relate to their surroundings in the way the North American settlers did.

This resulted in a very different emphasis on the artforms created by the early Europeans. In the North America’s the grand, histrionic landscapes of appropriation, of ownership, their Manifest Destiny paintings demonstrated their conceptual images of the changing of space to place.

Many of the first Europeans to live in Tasmania could not own the land, could not paint their landscapes of appropriation, of ownership—did not perceive the alien environment as place. Instead, they turned to the unique fauna and flora that surrounded them. They illustrated the strange wonders they saw around them. However, many of the natural history specimens they collected and painted were dispatched to the European metropolis to be classified and named. They did not yet use the recording of the environment to begin to form a relationship with the land. This would not occur until the coming of free settlers who chose to come to this far flung periphery of the to set down their new roots.

128

Chapter Five The Settlers—living at the periphery—1838 to 1846

But who will teach the flowers, Which our children loved, to dwell In a soil that is not ours? Home, home and friends, farewell.328

Tasmania had been established as a penal colony in 1803 but, it was not long before free settlers began to arrive. The numbers, at first, were few. Britain and France were still at war and would remain so until 1815, making the voyage difficult and, added to this, few migrants were willing to travel half way around the world to settle in a newly formed penal colony. After Britain defeated the French, the prospect of migrating to Tasmania became more feasible. As Alison Alexander notes, ‘After the war more ships were available and the armed forces discharged most of their men, who had to find work at the same time that Britain was suffering a depression’.329 This made the prospect of settling in the new colony more appealing, and so the number of free settlers arriving began to rise, attracted by the promise of work or land grants and free convict labour to develop their land. However, the number of free settlers did not eclipse the number of convicts for many years as previously noted. More than 74 000 convicts were sent to Tasmania between 1803 and 1853 when transportation finally ceased.330

By the 1820s, Tasmania was being promoted as an ideal place to emigrate, with publications such as James Dixon’s Narrative of a Voyage to New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, George Evans’ A Geographical, Historical, and Topographical Description of Van Diemen’s Land, Charles Jeffreys’ Van Diemen’s Land, and Joseph Lycett’s Views in Australia or New South Wales

328 Mary Morton Allport’s Journal 1832–33, 12 November, 1832. 329 Alison Alexander, Tasmania's Convicts: How Felons Built a Free Society (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2010), p.72. 330 Archives Tasmania, Convict Department, Available: http://www.linc.tas.gov.au/tasmaniasheritage/popular/convicts/convictdept/introduction, 1 December 2012. 129 and Van Diemen’s Land delineated331 singing the praises of the fledgling colony. While many of the immigrants perceived living in Tasmania only as a means of gaining wealth before returning home to Britain, by the 1820s families were arriving in the colony anxious to put down permanent roots. Tasmania was no longer a place only of forced exile.

Women artists

As the number of immigrants arriving in the 1830s and 1840s increased free women from the educated classes also settled in the colony. This had an immediately obvious positive effect on the emerging art and scientific scene there. Up to and including the 1830s, Tasmania was a quiet backwater for art and artists, it was after all a penal colony with few free settlers.

Mary Morton Allport, the colony’s first British woman artist of note, did not arrive until 1831. Her other significant fellow artistic figures in the beginning were temporary citizens, Lady Jane Franklin, the Governor's wife, who was there in her official capacity from 1837 to 1845,332 and Elizabeth Gould from 1838 to 1840. Louisa Anne Meredith arrived in New South Wales in 1839 before moving to Tasmania in 1841. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, painting, particularly the depiction of natural history subjects, was seen as a suitable past-time for young ladies of the middle and upper classes, and both Mary Morton Allport, and Louisa Anne Meredith had received that traditional training. They soon put that past experience of natural history painting into practice when they settled in the colony, while their male counterparts, such as

331 James Dixon, Narrative of a Voyage to New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land (Edinburgh: John Anderson, 1822), George William Evans, A Geographical, Historical, and Topographical Description of Van Diemen's Land (London: John Souter, 1822), Charles Jeffreys, Van Diemen's Land: Geographical and Descriptive Delineations of the Island of Van Diemen's Land (London: J.M. Richardson, 1820), Joseph Lycett, Views in Australia, or, New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land Delineated (London: John Souter, 1824). 332 Caroline Jordan, Picturesque Pursuits: Colonial Women Artists & the Amateur Tradition (Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2005), p.70. 130

John Glover who arrived in Tasmania in 1830, painted landscapes. I will discuss this later in the chapter.

The early settlers had left their familiar metropolitan centre and sailed to the furthest periphery of the empire, but they found that far periphery strange and wanting. In an effort to make Tasmania more like their ‘home’, almost as soon as they arrived in the colony the early settlers began planting the European trees and flowers familiar to them. The temperate climate of the island made it the most suitable of the Australian colonies for these plants, and they thrived. In their effort to make it more like ‘home’, more familiar and comfortable, more like the centre many still yearned for, the early settlers endeavoured to convert this wild, exotic land to an antipodean likeness of their lost centre. But some were also curious about their new home, and some of them began to collect and to draw the new plants and animals that surrounded them.

Mary Morton Allport

Mary Morton Allport (1806–1895) was born in Birmingham, England (Figure 63). As a young woman she studied art, being taught by her future mother-in-law in Staffordshire. In 1826 she married the Allport's youngest son, Joseph, and they immigrated to Tasmania in 1831.333

Figure 63: Mary Morton Allport and After arriving in Tasmania, Mary and Joseph lived in her children. Brighton near Hobart where Joseph Allport unsuccessfully tried his hand at farming. To supplement their income Mary painted miniature portraits334 making her the first professional woman artist in Australia. After the failure of their farming venture, the Allports moved to

333 Archives Tasmania. (Arrivals), Allport, Mr & Mrs & child, (ship) Platina, (Port of Departure) London, (Date of Arrival)14 December 1831, (reference), Archives Tasmania, Cus30/1/1 P62, Available: http://www.portal.archives.tas.gov.au, 1 December 2012. 334 Joanna Richardson, "An Annotated Edition of the Journals of Mary Morton Allport," University of Tasmania, 2006. 131

Hobart in 1832, where Mary continued to produce portrait miniatures, painted landscapes and natural history studies. She was also the first woman artist to

make etchings, engravings and lithographs in Figure 64: Christ Australia.335 While Mary Morton Allport and many of Church at West Bromwich. the colonial women artists like her are often dismissed as amateur artists, a number of them were trained artists who had worked professionally before emigrating, and they contributed to the family’s income through their art after arriving in the colonies (Figure 64). With their interest in natural history illustration, women artists like Allport were also able to contribute to the scientific knowledge of their colony.

Like all young ladies of the time, Mary Morton Allport had been taught to paint flowers, and they become the strongest symbol for her homesickness when she writes:

Painted a snow-drop in my album from memory—I have never seen one in this colony, and my heart yearns for them. I dreamed one night that Aunt Chapman sent me a large box full.336

With flowers being such a compelling representation of home, it is not surprising that the native flora (and fauna) of her new home should become the means for her gradual adaptation to her new environment. As Caroline Jordan points out, ‘A transference of allegiance from the English wildflower to the Australian was a conventional, yet still emotionally charged, feminine path to assimilation in the new country’. Mary Allport’s experience is probably typical in this respect.337

335 See Caroline Jordan, Picturesque Pursuits: Colonial Women Artists & the Amateur Tradition (Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2005), Alison Alexander, ed., The Companion to Tasmanian History, (Hobart: Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies, University of Tasmania, 2005), Alison Alexander, Tasmania's Convicts: How Felons Built a Free Society (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2010), and Tim Bonyhady, The Colonial Image: Australian Painting 1800–1880 (Chippendale, Australia: Ellsyd Press, 1987). 336 Mary Morton Allport, Journal 1832–33 12 November, 1832. 337 Caroline Jordan, Picturesque Pursuits: Colonial Women Artists & the Amateur Tradition (Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2005), p.165. 132

Natural history illustration

Sometime around the end of 1832, Mary Allport began painting the native flora and fauna that surrounded her; and they soon became her passion. Mary Allport painted the traditional ‘single specimen on a blank

background’ natural history illustrations (Figure 65). Figure 65: Brunonia australis. The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery has The Royal Society of Tasmania’s natural history illustrations by Mary Allport in their collection.

The Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts has an extensive collection of Mary Allport’s natural history illustrations. Among them are a number of delicate images of moths, butterflies and other insects (Figure 66). The illustrations of butterflies and caterpillars are wonderful sketches showing the insects completed in fine detail and finished in watercolours, with the surrounding leaves and branches shown in pencil outline only. These illustrations come from Mary Allport’s private sketchbooks, a personal record of her investigation into the natural history of her new home. Each new find being recorded in exquisite detail, building a catalogue of memories that constructed place Figure 66: Insects out of space. Figure 66: Insects.

. In Picturesque Pursuits, Caroline Jordan notes, ‘Natural history illustration was more than just an interesting hobby or even a potential professional career for colonial women artists. It was also a means by which those displaced from their original homes could come to terms with an unfamiliar country imaginatively and emotionally’.338

338 Caroline Jordan, Picturesque Pursuits: Colonial Women Artists & the Amateur Tradition (Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2005), p.158. 133

Natural history art was the domain not only of women artists; it was also the domain of scientists interested in the exotic flora and fauna of the antipodes. So, while natural history art was considered a suitable pastime for educated women—the homemakers, and hence its significant factor in the importance of natural history art Figure 67: Telopea in Tasmania, in its role in the sense of belonging to truncata from the mountain pass above place—it also gave women in the colonies an important Barrett's Mill. ability to contribute to scientific enquiry. Jordan notes: The combination of morality with science would present a particularly strong appeal for many women artists in the colonies, where women grasped the real chance to contribute to scientific discovery. Women could safely participate in finding and recording exotic new plants for the British Empire, without running the risk of compromising their feminine virtue in the process’.339

This feminine pastime of flower painting was therefore not entirely innocent of contributing to the imperial notions of Britain, and the act of colonisation.340 While Mary Morton Allport did paint in the traditional scientific method of a single specimen on a blank background, at times she combined the image of a single specimen with a background. It was a method she used for Telopea truncata, from the mountain pass above Barrett’s Mill.

Painted around 1840, one of Mary Allport’s best known works, the Telopea truncata, from the mountain pass above Barrett’s Mill (Figure 67) also appears as an important indicator in her growing appreciation of the Australian bush. When she first arrived in Tasmania she longed for English flowers and dreamt

339 Caroline Jordan, Picturesque Pursuits: Colonial Women Artists & the Amateur Tradition (Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2005), p.18. 340 See Lucile H. Brockway, Science and Colonial Expansion: The Role of the British Royal Botanic Gardens (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), Richard Drayton, Nature's Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the 'Improvement' of the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), Jim Endersby, Imperial Nature: and the Practices of Victorian Science (London: The University of Chicago Press, 2008), for more on this. 134 of being given snowdrops. By the time she painted the Tasmanian Waratah (Telopea truncata), however, she had clearly accepted Australian flora as beautiful rather than curious. A decade later she wrote 'Nothing in the world is so graceful as the Whitey-blue gums, except the English Birch and that had not the lovely colour’.341

Telopea truncata, from the mountain pass above Barrett’s Mill was exhibited in the 1845 Hobart Fine Art Exhibition. Instead of the usual botanical figuring of the plant against a blank background, Mary Allport dramatically places the unfurling waratah in situ against a sublime Tasmanian mountain backdrop of soaring gum trees and blue hills in the distance, all equally painstakingly painted in her fine miniaturist brushstrokes.342

In this painting, Mary Allport marks the beginning of her journey from immigrant to settler. However, like William Buelow Gould and his landscapes of the same time, she has yet to come to terms with the alien wilderness. She has forsaken the purely natural history illustration mode of treating her subjects in this work, but has not yet truly moved to the landscape painting of appropriation of the ‘Manifest Destiny’ paintings of North American painters. The landscape she paints does not belong to her—the mountain pass above Barrett’s Mill—could be located in many elevated landscapes in Tasmania.343 This far landscape is still a piece of distantly envisioned and imagined land. It is anonymous, only an indistinguishable backdrop to the single identifiable waratah specimen in the foreground. It is the unseen ‘Barrett’s Mill’, the familiar sign of habitation, not the ‘place’ that is named. For Mary Allport the Tasmanian wilderness still remains ‘space’, not yet endowed with the meaning

341 Tim Bonyhady, The Colonial Image: Australian Painting 1800–1880 (Chippendale, Australia: Ellsyd Press, 1987), p.34. 342 Caroline Jordan, Picturesque Pursuits: Colonial Women Artists & the Amateur Tradition (Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2005), p.166. 343 Tasmanian waratah (Telopea truncata) is widespread in the state, occurring in cool, moist, hill country in wet/dry sclerophyll forest, in montane forests, subalpine shrubberies and scrubland at altitudes from 600 to 1200 m. Australian National Botanical Gardens, 2003, Available: http://www.anbg.gov.au/telopea/index.html, 10 May 2011Barrett’s Mill was located near St Patrick’s River, near Launceston, Tasmania. 135 that would make it become ‘place’.344 In this painting, Mary Allport illustrates her estrangement from her new home, still only comfortable with the single, intimate blossom, and a few nearby trees, but still awed and overwhelmed by the strangeness, the vastness of the distant untamed wilderness. Although the title of the painting, Telopea truncata, from the mountain pass above Barrett’s Mill intimates a human involvement, the landscape Mary Allport paints is bereft of human habitation. In this painting Mary Allport shows that although she has now become familiar and comfortable with the individual flora of her new home, the land and its wilderness, itself, is still the alien other to her and not as yet ‘home’.

Mary Allport’s continued to illustrate the fauna and flora of Tasmania, gaining expertise as a natural history illustrator. In 1861, some 20 years after her painting of the Waratah described above, her work was recognised by The Royal Society of Tasmania, when they accepted a coloured drawing of the Coral Fish for their collection.345 Later, in 1864, ‘A well executed watercolour drawing by Mrs Allport of a fish of the same genus (Clinus) was exhibited’ by the Society.346 Natural history art gave the women artists of the era, a means to contribute to the scientific enquiry of the second scientific revolution of the nineteenth century.

Landscapes

Mary Morton Allport also painted some landscapes. These, however, are not the grand landscapes of appropriation, but are the intimate reminders of family

life. Sandy Bay (Figure 68) is a reminder of places she Figure 68: Sandy Bay. visits near where she lives and family events, such as Dry's Bluff on Morton's Wedding day, 1846 and Evett &

344 What begins as undifferentiated space become place as we get to know it better and endow it with value.Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press, 1977), p.6. 345 The Royal Society of Tasmania Papers and Proceedings Annual Report (1862), p.24. 346 The Royal Society of Tasmania Papers and Proceedings (1864), p.103. 136

Grouse (Figure 69). Like the natural history illustrations, they are painted to make her surroundings more familiar, more ordinary. They show everyday life, and by painting these small intimate studies she begins to transform the empty space that surrounds her into a familiar place. A

place filled with personal memories and meaning. Figure 69: Family landscapes. Louisa Anne Meredith

I am often glad that I spent the first year of my antipodean life in New South Wales, for now many things which I should not have observed had I arrived here [Tasmania] in the first instance, are sources of great delight to me, as being so much more English

than in the larger colony, and I could fancy myself Figure 70: Louisa some degree nearer home.347 Anne Meredith.

English migrant Louisa Anne Meredith (née Twamley)(1812–1895) penned this in her self-illustrated book My Home in Tasmania during a residence of some nine years348 which she published in 1852, some twelve years after arriving in the colony. While Meredith never returned to England, as can be understood from her sentiments above, it would for her forever remain ‘home’ until her death in 1895.349 Meredith not only wrote about her life in Tasmania, she also illustrated the fauna and flora of her new surroundings, as did a number of other women settlers of the colony in the mid-nineteenth century.

347 Meredith, L. A., My Home in Tasmania during a residence of some nine years, in two volumes, London, John Murray, 1852, p.26. 348 Louisa Anne Meredith, My Home in Tasmania During a Residence of Nine Years (London: John Murray, 1852). 349 Grimshaw, Patricia, and Ann Standish. "Making Tasmania Home: Louisa Anne Meredith's Colonizing Prose." Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 28 1 and 2 (2007), p.1. 137

Like Mary Morton Allport, Louisa Anne Meredith (1812–1895) was born in Birmingham (Figure 70). Meredith was already a published artist and writer before migrating to Tasmania, having published a number of self-illustrated books, including: Poems by Louisa Anne Twamley: with original illustrations, drawn and etched by the authoress, Our wild flowers familiarly Figure 71: Anemone described and illustrated, The romance of nature: or, and lily of the valley, Louisa Anne The Flower—seasons illustrated, and An Autumn ramble Meredith. by the Wye (1839).350

The illustration Anemone and lily of the valley (Figure 71) from The romance of nature: or, The Flower—seasons illustrated (1836),351 published in England before she migrated to Australia, shows Louisa Meredith’s expertise in floral painting. Although not a truly scientific illustration, in that it shows more than one specimen, it does bear the approach of that style of art: the blank background, highlighting the flowers and the detail that allows the specimens to be identified.

It is evident she was a recognised, published artist, having her own career in the arts in England. About her move to Australia, Caroline Jordan notes, she was, ‘A reluctant émigré at the age of twenty-seven in 1839, Louisa once professed to enjoy her single ‘bluestocking’ existence in Birmingham so much that she had no qualms about rejecting an offer from her Tasmanian relations to go out as a governess to the colonies’.352 Nevertheless, after her marriage to

350 Louisa Anne Meredith, Poems by Louisa Anne Twamley: With Original Illustrations, Drawn and Etched by the Authoress (London: Charles Tilt, 1835), Louisa Anne Meredith, Our Wildflowers Familiarly Described and Illustrated: By Louisa Anne Twamley (London: Charles Tilt, 1839), Louisa Anne (Twamley) Meredith, The Romance of Flowers: Or, the Flower-Seasons Illustrated (London: Charles Tilt, 1836). 351 Louisa Anne (Twamley) Meredith, The Romance of Flowers: Or, the Flower-Seasons Illustrated (London: Charles Tilt, 1836). 352 Caroline Jordan, Picturesque Pursuits: Colonial Women Artists & the Amateur Tradition (Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2005), p.72. 138 her Tasmanian-reared cousin Charles Meredith in 1839, migrate she did. What did she think of her new antipodean home?

Meredith’s first impressions of the Tasmanian wilderness were not as favourable as her opinion of its pastoral landscapes,353 the landscapes that reminded her of home in England. Indeed, she wrote of the landscape:

Gigantic gum-trees rose on every side, and in every variety that such tall, straight, bare, gaunt things can exhibit; for handsome as single gum-trees frequently are, and thick-foliaged and massive in their sombre hues, those which grow clustered in the forests are almost invariably ugly.354

Nor did she confine her criticisms to the forest landscape. She was no more complimentary of the forests themselves.

Everything around us was cold, damp, dark and gloomy. Hideous fungi, of all varieties of shape and colour, clustered beneath the wet half-charred logs or inside the hollow trees, as if they knew themselves to be unfit to meet the light of day, or even the twilight of the forest, so disgusting were they, in their livid, bloated, venomous-looking swarms.355

When Meredith first arrived in Tasmania, the landscape was completely alien to her. Her only reference was the British landscape she had recently left, and to eyes not accustomed to this land, the all encompassing ‘strangeness’ of every plant and animal she saw was overwhelming. Tasmania was still space. It was not until she began to grow familiar with the fauna and flora, until she began to illustrate them, that space became place and she began to identify with her new home.

353 Note quote at the beginning of this section. 354 Louisa Anne Meredith, My Home in Tasmania During a Residence of Nine Years (London: John Murray, 1852), pp. 126–27. 355 Louisa Anne Meredith, My Home in Tasmania During a Residence of Nine Years (London: John Murray, 1852), pp.126–27. 139

Publications in Tasmania

Soon after her arrival in Tasmania, Louisa Anne Meredith began drawing and publishing again. She wrote about her life and experiences in the new colony

for an English market keen to learn more about life in Figure 72: Bush the faraway Australian colonies. Her first publication friends in Tasmania, was of her experiences during her first year in the Louisa Anne Meredith. colonies spent in New South Wales where her husband tried unsuccessfully to farm, Notes and Sketches of New South Wales during a Residence in That Colony from 1839 to 1841 (1849).356 Like her first impressions of Tasmania’s wilderness, Louisa Meredith was scathing in her criticism of life in New South Wales. Patricia Grimshaw and Ann Standish note, ‘Meredith dismissed the town of Sydney as hot, glaring, and dusty, its inhabitants as pretentiously imitative of British social customs, and, in the case of emancipated convicts, although possibly wealthy, lacking in taste and education. Drunkenness was rife among the white lower classes … The native flora was in general monotonous: it was, nevertheless, only in the natural offerings of the colony that Meredith found aspects to praise and enjoy’.357 Not the words of someone with any sense of belonging or contentment with their new colonial home.

Louisa Anne Meredith later wrote more favourably of her new surroundings in Tasmania. She wrote of her first view of Hobart:

356 Louisa Anne Meredith, Notes and Sketches of New South Wales: During a Residence in That Colony from 1839 to 1844, Murray's Home and Colonial Library #14 (London: John Murray, 1844). ‘The nineteenth century saw the birth of the great travel list, starting with the distinctive Murray Handbooks, and leading through the great explorers, including Franklin, Livingstone ... scientists and inventors chose to publish through Murray, amongst them Charles Babbage, Malthus and Lyell’. http://www.johnmurray.co.uk/History.aspx]: 357 Patricia Grimshaw and Ann Standish, "Making Tasmania Home: Louisa Anne Meredith's Colonizing Prose," Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 28.1 and 2 (2007), p.2. See also Louisa Anne Meredith, Notes and Sketches of New South Wales: During a Residence in That Colony from 1839 to 1844, Murray's Home and Colonial Library #14 (London: John Murray, 1844). 140

The situation of the town is the most beautiful that can be conceived—on the noble banks of the Derwent, with green meadows, gardens, and cultivated land around it, interspersed with pleasant country residences and farms.358

And later,

It is a much smaller place than Sydney, but its home-like English aspect at once won my preference.359

Jordan writes, ‘she lauded [Tasmania] for the ‘English’ character of its climate and landscape, an association permanently fixed by colonists of its nostalgic English place names’.360

Although more pleased with her surroundings in Tasmania, she was still a strong critic of its inhabitants. Jordan notes, ‘It is fair to say that Louisa was a snob; her identity [my emphasis] sided with the audience reading her words in England, rather than with her fellow colonists, and she always strongly asserted the superiority of all things British over the colonial’.361 Her illustrated Tasmanian books include; My home in Tasmania; or, Nine years in Australia (1852), Bush friends in Tasmania: native flowers, berries, and insects, drawn from life, illustrated in verse, and briefly described (1860), Over the straits: a visit to Victoria (1861), Our island home: a Tasmanian sketch book (1879), and Tasmanian friends and foes, feathered, furred and finned: a family chronicle of country life, natural history, and veritable adventure (1880).362

358 Louisa Anne Meredith, Notes and Sketches of New South Wales: During a Residence in That Colony from 1839 to 1844, Murray's Home and Colonial Library #14 (London: John Murray, 1844), p.21. 359 Louisa Anne Meredith, Notes and Sketches of New South Wales: During a Residence in That Colony from 1839 to 1844, Murray's Home and Colonial Library #14 (London: John Murray, 1844), p.22. 360 Caroline Jordan, Picturesque Pursuits: Colonial Women Artists & the Amateur Tradition (Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2005), p.161. 361 Caroline Jordan, Picturesque Pursuits: Colonial Women Artists & the Amateur Tradition (Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2005), p.73. 362 Louisa Anne Meredith, My Home in Tasmania During a Residence of Nine Years (London: John Murray, 1852), Louisa Anne Meredith, Bush Friends in Tasmania: Native Flowers, Fruits and Insects (London: Macmillan, 1891), Louisa Anne Meredith, Over the Straits: A 141

Meredith also wrote a number of children’s books and novels, but it is chiefly her illustrated books that concern us here.

The illustrations in these books, although containing examples of native fauna and flora cannot be truly Figure 73: described as natural history illustrations in the context I Tasmanian Tiger and Platypus by am using that description for this thesis—art for Louisa Anne science—however, they are early examples of the Meredith. illustration of native fauna and flora. It is also true that the illustrations are very detailed and accurate to the extent that most of the species can be identified.

Roslynn Haynes observes that, ‘As well as flowers and fruit, Meredith was a keen observer of Tasmanian fauna. Her carefully observed illustrations of the Thylacine, the

giant kangaroo, Tasmanian Devil, bandicoot and Figure 74: Platypus and Tasmanian platypus would have been the first introduction of these Tiger by H. C. creatures to English children’.363 Despite Roslynn Richter for Gould. Haynes’ description of Louisa Anne Meredith’s illustrations above, it should be noted that some illustrations, such as the Thylacine and the Platypus (Figure 73),364 have clearly been copied from illustrations of the animals by H. C. Richter for John Gould’s Mammals of Australia (Figure 74). Louisa Meredith acknowledges this when she notes in the Preface to Tasmanian Friends and Foes,

Visit to Victoria (London: Chapman and Hall, 1861), Louisa Anne Meredith, Our Island Home: A Tasmanian Sketchbook (Hobart: Walch & Sons, 1879), Louisa Anne Meredith, Tasmanian Friends and Foes, Feathered, Furred and Finned: A Family Chronicle of Country Life, Natural History, and Veritable Adventure (Hobart Town: J. Walch & Sons, 1880), 363 Roslynn Haynes, Tasmanian Visions: Landscapes in Writing, Art and Photography (Sandy Bay, Tas: Polymath Press, 2006), p.102. 364 Louisa Anne Meredith, Tasmanian Friends and Foes, Feathered, Furred and Finned: A Family Chronicle of Country Life, Natural History, and Veritable Adventure (Hobart Town: J. Walch & Sons, 1880). 142

Mr Gould, whose peerless works have won the gratitude for him of all the world, most kindly permitted me to use copies of some of his admirable pictures of Tasmanian animals and birds; and whether such form any part of these illustrations or not, my sincere thanks for his liberty are equally due.’365

Of the Thylacine, Gould notes that, ‘The circumstance of a fine pair, male and female, of the Thylacinus cynocephalus being now living in the Gardens of the Zoological Society in the Regent’s Park, enables me to give the best figure of the animal that has yet appeared,’366 indicating that, while these creatures were drawn from life, they were specimens in a zoo in England. The background of the image is a purely fanciful one, not the cage the Tigers now found themselves in, nor is it the Tiger’s true habitat in Tasmania. It is the same background that Meredith chose for her drawing. It may be that by 1880, the date of Meredith’s illustration, the Thylacine was already so scarce that she did not have the opportunity to see living specimens to draw.

Louisa Anne Meredith’s floral illustrations for her books also do not fit the true natural history illustration style, that of the single specimen on a blank background. The illustration below (Figure 75), from Bush Friends in Tasmania: Native Flowers, Fruits and Insects,367 showing a bunch of selected native flora and a butterfly is typical of her style. The species illustrated, are, however, able to be identified: native pepper, Tasmannia aromatica (now

Figure 75: Flowers Tasmania lanceolata), Red correa, Correa speciosa by Louisa Anne (now Correa sp?), and the Native lilac, Tetratheca Meredith. glandulosa (now Tetratheca labillardierei). A report in

365 Louisa Anne Meredith, Tasmanian Friends and Foes, Feathered, Furred and Finned: A Family Chronicle of Country Life, Natural History, and Veritable Adventure (Hobart Town: J. Walch & Sons, 1880), pp.5–6. 366 John Gould: with modern commentaries by Joan M Dixon, The Best of Gould's Mammals: Selections from Mammals of Australia Volumes I, Ii and Iii (South Melbourne: Macmillan, 1984), p.48. 367 Louisa Anne Meredith, Bush Friends in Tasmania: Native Flowers, Fruits and Insects (London: Macmillan, 1891). 143 the Mercury about the illustrations notes, ‘Mrs Meredith appropriately calls these native flowers berries, and insects, her ‘friends’. Only one who had lived among them, and watched their changes and characteristics with the affectionate love of a friend, could have depicted all their delicate beauties with the tender fidelity which is here seen in every leaf, berry, and flower of the plant, or wing of the insect.’368 It is beginning to be recognised that living for some time—watched their changes and characteristics—in the environment that the plants and animals one illustrates is important.

Natural history illustrations

Louisa Anne Meredith was also an active member of The Royal Society of Tasmania, a rare privilege for a woman in the mid-to-late1800s. She completed a

number of natural history illustrations that were presented at Royal Society meetings. Her contribution to natural history illustration was recognised by her contemporaries with her being the first woman elected Figure 76: Fish as an Honorary Member of the Royal Society of illustrations by Louisa Anne Tasmania 1881.369 Tony Brown and Max Banks write of Meredith. the extent of The Royal Society of Tasmania’s collections of Meredith’s works in their report of the collections:

The Society purchased two sketchbooks by Meredith and was given a third. The contents of these sketchbooks are not recorded. In addition to the sketchbooks, the Collection370 contains three other groups of works by Meredith, one predominantly of landscapes … a second … which consists predominantly of watercolours of plants. The third group of 36 works, is described in list as ‘Meredith's Fish Paintings’ [Figure 76] and may be those mentioned in the Diary (1 July, 1884 or 21 October, 1895).371

368 "Mrs Meredith's Bush Friends." Mercury 1860, p.3. 369 Papers and Procedings (Hobart: The Royal Society of Tasmania, 1881), p.xii. 370 The Royal Society of Tasmania art collection. 371 MR Banks and AV Brown, Draft Report on the Art Collection of the Royal Society of Tasmania (Hobart: The Council of the Royal Society of Tasmania, 2002). 144

The natural history illustrations in these collections show an artist growing more confident and familiar with her subjects. The once detested native flowers are now celebrated. Tim Bonyhady writes, ‘Twenty-one years after arriving in Australia, Louisa no longer thought of herself as English. While her view of the gum trees remained equivocal, they had become, ‘our grand Eucalyti’. She explained: They are usually thought ugly by English people, and very many are undeniably so; but in some parts of the colony, where they seem to flourish as if they enjoyed themselves, many of the species attain an enormous size, and are truly magnificent trees’.372 Meredith was beginning to identify with Tasmania. To see herself as Tasmanian, not English. The free settlers of the colony were changing their allegiance from the imperial power and starting to move their centre of belonging to that of their new home.

Landscapes

Louisa Anne Meredith also painted a number of landscapes. Unlike Glover’s large-scale oil paintings of ownership, of appropriation, Meredith’s landscapes were intimate sketches of the places she lived. Figure 77 Figure 77: Spring was drawn to illustrate her home Spring Vale in her Vale, Louisa Anne book My Home in Tasmania during a residency of some Meredith. nine years.373

When John Glover sent almost one hundred oil paintings of the Tasmanian landscape to London in 1835–36, he did so not because there was no market for his work locally, but because ‘the market he wanted to exploit and impress was at 'home' in England’.374 Louisa Anne Meredith’s My Home in Tasmania

372 Tim Bonyhady, The Colonial Earth (Carlton South: Melbourne University Press, 2000), pp.139–40. 373 Louisa Anne Meredith, My Home in Tasmania During a Residence of Nine Years (London: John Murray, 1852). 374 Tim Bonyhady, The Colonial Image: Australian Painting 1800–1880 (Chippendale, Australia: Ellsyd Press, 1987), p.28. 145 during a residence of some nine years and Tasmanian Friends and Foes375 served the same purpose in showing Tasmania as an idyllic, bountiful new colony, a place where one could acquire land, build grand estates and settle— never quite ‘home’, but as close to it as one could find in the antipodes.

The visit by Elizabeth and John Gould

Tasmania remained of interest to metropolitan artists and naturalists. But, it cannot be forgotten that their interest was of a different calibre to those of the settler-artists. They vision was global. They did not paint the plants and animals they saw around their home. They came to collect, examine and draw the exotic fauna and flora, then return to the metropolis to publish the results of their research for a global market, much like the explorers who came before them.

It is not possible to write about natural history illustration in Tasmania without mentioning John Gould (1804–1881), who visited Tasmania with his wife Elizabeth in 1838–1840. Michael Hoare writes; ‘Gould was in Australia from 1838, and the prospect of sampling the congenial scientific atmosphere of the Franklin’s circle and the promise of exploring Tasmania for anomalous fauna—which was thought to be even more unique than that of the nearby mainland—appealed to him’.376 The natural history illustration of the Tasmanian birds and marsupials was further advanced by the visit to Tasmania of the ornithologist John Gould and his illustrator wife Elizabeth. Again Tasmania had the leading natural history illustrators of the era working on the fauna of the island.

375 Louisa Anne Meredith, My Home in Tasmania During a Residence of Nine Years (London: John Murray, 1852), Louisa Anne Meredith, Tasmanian Friends and Foes, Feathered, Furred and Finned: A Family Chronicle of Country Life, Natural History, and Veritable Adventure (Hobart Town: J. Walch & Sons, 1880). 376 Michael Edward Hoare, ""All Things Are Queer and Opposite": Scientific Societies in Tasmania in the 1840s," Isis 60.2 (1969), p.209. 146

Gould was already a recognized naturalist and ornithologist when he embarked on his voyage to Australia, having previously published a number of works including A Century of Birds from the Himalaya Mountains (1831–1832), illustrated by his wife Elizabeth Gould, and The Birds of Europe (1832– 1837).377 He was the curator at the Zoological Society of London where he had access to the skins of Australian birds, as well as receiving specimens sent by his brothers-in-law who had migrated to New South Wales. While working at the Zoological Society, he had already begun his work on Australian birds, describing some 27 species by 1836.378 Gould then commenced work on what he saw as his next great project; a definitive publication on Australian birds. In 1837 and 1838 Gould published The Birds of Australia and the adjacent Islands,379 however being dissatisfied with the results, which had been principally based on skins, and did not show the jizz of the subjects, he made the decision to sail to Australia to study the living birds in their native habitat.380 Gould withdrew the first two parts of The Birds of Australia and the adjacent Islands from distribution, not producing any further material on Australian birds until his return from Australia in 1840.

John and Elizabeth Gould were to spend more than two years in Australia collecting specimens, making sketches and drawings, gathering information preparing for the publication of their grand books on Australian birds and animals.381 They travelled extensively through the colonies, visiting South Australia, New South Wales, and of course, Tasmania. Leo Joseph also notes,

377 John Gould, A Century of Birds from the Himalaya Mountains (London: John Gould, 1832), John Gould, The Birds of Europe (London: John Gould, 1837). 378 Leo Joseph and Robert Mc Craken Peck, eds., John Gould's Birds of Australia. (Hobart: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 2004). 379 John Gould, The Birds of Australia: And the Adjacent Islands (London: John Gould, 1838). 380 See Jonathan Elphick, Birds: The Art of Ornithology (London: Scriptum Editions, 2008), and Roslynn Haynes, Tasmanian Visions: Landscapes in Writing, Art and Photography (Sandy Bay, Tas: Polymath Press, 2006), for further information on Gould’s decision to travel to Australia. 381 See National Library of Australia, Treasures from the National Library: John Gould's Birds of Australia, 2010, Available: http://www.nla.gov.au/collect/treasures/apr_treasure.html, 3 May 2010, Jonathan Elphick, Birds: The Art of Ornithology (London: Scriptum Editions, 2008). 147

‘While in Sydney, he [Gould] met the officers of the HMS Beagle, the same ship that Charles Darwin had sailed on. He obtained, from them, specimens from the Kimberley region of Western Australia’.382

While John Gould is often thought of as the illustrator of his works, he was not responsible for the final artwork Figure 78: Euphema featured in most of his publications. Gould did, splendida, John Gould. however, complete many detailed sketches from which his illustrators worked (Figure 78). For the final illustrations in his books he employed some of the finest natural history illustrators of the era. His wife, Elizabeth, illustrated his books (Figure 79) until her untimely death from an infection after the birth of their sixth child in 1841.

Figure 79: Elizabeth Gould. The Gould’s arrived in Tasmania on 18 September 1838 onboard the Parsee. Elizabeth Gould would stay with the Franklins for some ten months during383 her stay in Hobart while John ventured in search of specimens in Tasmania and in New South Wales. While in Hobart she started her drawings for Gould’s upcoming books. In January 1839 she wrote to her mother, ‘Just now during John’s absence I find amusement and employment in drawing some of the plants of the colony, which will help to render the work of Birds of Australia more interesting’.384 Later John Gould wrote of her contribution to his work, ‘an immense mass of drawings, both ornithological and botanical … by her inimitable hand and pencil’.385

382 Leo Joseph and Robert Mc Craken Peck, eds., John Gould's Birds of Australia, (Hobart: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 2004). 383 Sean Dawes, John Gould and the Fauna of Southern Australia (Adelaide: Crawford House Publishing, 2004), p.120. 384 Alec H. Chisholm, The Story of Elizabeth Gould (Melbourne: The Hawthorn Press, 1944), p.49. 385 John Gould Birds of Australia, Preface to vol.1., cited in Sean Dawes, John Gould and the Fauna of Southern Australia (Adelaide: Crawford House Publishing, 2004), p.120. 148

As noted above Elizabeth Gould also made some preliminary sketches of birds for the book while in Hobart. The illustration titled Black-headed Honey-eater (Melithreptus affinus), held at the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, is attributed to Elizabeth Gould (Figure 80 top). The illustration is rather that of the

Crescent Honeyeater (Phylidonyris pyrrheptera) (Figure 81) of which there is an illustration, though by Richter in Birds of Australia. Although the birds have been rearranged, it would appear to be based on Elizabeth Gould’s early sketch.The black-headed honeyeater which appears in Gould’s Birds of Australia (Figure 81) is clearly an illustration of Melithreptus affinus, Figure 80: Black- commonly called the Black-headed Honey-eater. headed Honey-eater, Elizabeth Gould, and Crescent After Elizabeth’s death, John Gould employed a number Honey-eater by Richter. of artists to complete the illustration of his books. The most prolific of those artists was Henry Constantine Richter (1821–1902). Richter was one of Gould's most faithful and long-serving assistants, producing some 1600 lithographic plates and watercolour paintings for him. As well as those for Birds of Australia,386 he worked on many other Gould titles, including those on

birds as different as American partridges and Figure 81: Crescent Honey-eater hummingbirds, as well as The Birds of Asia.387 (Phylidonyris pyrrheptera).

386 John Gould, Birds of Australia (London: Printed by Richard and John E. Taylor, published by the author, 1848–1869). 387 Jonathan Elphick, Birds: The Art of Ornithology (London: Scriptum Editions, 2008), p.233. 149

Birds of Australia was published in eight volumes; seven published between 1840 and 1848, with the eighth, the Supplement being published from 1851 to 1869. These volumes are regarded as, ‘amongst the world's finest illustrated books, and a landmark in the ornithology of Australia. They represent the pinnacle of

Gould's scientific achievement, being the first comprehensive account of the birds of this most recently settled continent’.388 Birds of Australia contains a total of 681 beautifully hand-coloured lithographs. The vast majority of these, 595, were the work Henry Richter Figure 82: Black- (Figure 83). Of the remaining 86 illustrations, Elizabeth headed Honey-eater by Richter. Gould, was responsible for all but three. Edward Lear, completed two plates and Benjamin Waterhouse, did just one plate, of an Emu with chicks.

Ornithology was not Gould’s only interest. While on his travels around Tasmania and the other Australian colonies he also collected specimens and studied the habits of the interesting and unique mammals he saw Figure 83: (Figure 83). Gould went on to publish two more highly Acanthizae ewingii: Gould, (Tasmanian successful books on the fauna of the continent: A Thornbill), J. Gould Monograph of the Macropodidae or Family of and HCRichter. Kangaroos (1841–1842), and The Mammals of Australia (1845–1863) (Figure 84).389 Together these books contained over 200 coloured plates.390 Visiting naturalists like Gould were drawing attention to the Figure 84: Southern remarkable birds and animals of the island. The hairy-nosed wombat, J Wolf for J Gould.

388 Jonathan Elphick, Birds: The Art of Ornithology (London: Scriptum Editions, 2008), pp.234–234. 389 John Gould, The Mammals of Australia (London: the author, 1863), John Gould, A Monograph of the Macropodidae, or Family of Kangaroos (London: John Gould, 1842). 390 Leo Joseph and Robert Mc Craken Peck, eds., John Gould's Birds of Australia. (Hobart: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 2004). 150 significance of these books to the early settlers and their understanding of the fauna and flora of their new home was recognised in Tasmania with The Royal Society of Tasmania obtaining copies for their library.

Landscape art in Tasmania – John Glover

The newly arrived settlers were not only looking to the natural history of their new home. They were beginning to develop the sense of ownership of their land that led to the painting of large, grand landscapes.

While natural history art in early Tasmania benefited Figure 85: Portrait of John Glover, greatly from the arrival of women artists such as Mary Mary Morton Allport ca 1832. Morton Allport, Louisa Anne Meredith and Elizabeth Gould, landscape art saw arguably the greatest colonial artist, John Glover (1767–1849), arrive in the colony in 1830 (Figure 85).391 Glover was the first colonial landscape artist whose work clearly distinguished the Australian landscape from that of England, while still situating it within the traditions of the Picturesque, he was thus able to make it imaginable to his contemporaries in Britain.392

Glover was 63 years old when he moved to Tasmania and he followed three of his sons who had previously emigrated to the colony. He had perhaps also been influenced to move by reports of the colony from the family of his old employer Mrs William Allport, the mother-in-law of Mary Morton Allport.393

391 Archives Tasmania, Mb2-39-1-1-Image011, Available: http://rddtprod.education.tas.gov.au, 12 December 2012. 392 Roslynn Haynes, Tasmanian Visions: Landscapes in Writing, Art and Photography (Sandy Bay, Tas: Polymath Press, 2006), p.xii. 393 State Library of Tasmania, 1971, The Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, State Library of Tasmania, Hobart, “Joseph Allport, Mary’s husband, the founder of the Tasmanian branch was born at Cedar Court, Aldridge, in that county, on 15 October, 1800. He was the youngest child of William Allport (1752–1839) by his second wife Hannah Curzon (1759–1842). Mrs William Allport ran a girl's school at Cedar Court for many years. Here John Glover (1767–1849) the well known British artist, later to emigrate to 151

On moving to Tasmania, Glover looked forward to being a substantial landowner in the colony and painting the novel scenery. He was granted land for a property he named Patterdale.394 The arrival of an accomplished landscape artist in Tasmania brought about a change in the nature of art in the colony, as Bonyhady notes, ‘John Glover was the only colonial artist to have achieved a considerable reputation in Europe before choosing to settle in Australia’.395

Glover again became prolific in his painting once he moved to Patterdale (Figure 86). A feature of his Tasmanian paintings, as noted by Bonyhady, is the

Figure 86: autobiographical element. ‘The personal is most Patterdale Van apparent, however, in Glover's many paintings of his Diemen’s Land, John Glover. property, Patterdale, which was his favourite subject while in Tasmania. As the son of a small Leicestershire farmer, Glover appears to have derived great satisfaction from being a substantial landholder in Tasmania, and he probably gained unusual enjoyment from recording his own farm on canvas’.396

In Glover’s landscapes, Tasmania saw the beginnings of the visual appropriation of the country in a manner similar to that of the paintings of

Tasmania, was drawing master in the early years of the nineteenth century. In addition to teaching the girls, Glover also instructed the elder members of the Allport family of whom Henry Curzon Allport (1788–1854), Joseph's elder brother, became a professional artist. H.C. Allport taught drawing for a time at his mother's school where one of his pupils was Mary Morton Chapman (1806–1895). In 1826 she was to marry Joseph Allport.” p.9. 394 See: David Hansen, John Glover and the Colonial Picturesque (Hobart: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 2003), Bernard William Smith, Glover, John (1767–1849)', Melbourne University Press, 1966, Melbourne University Press, Available: http://adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A010416b.htm, 07 July 2010, Tim Bonyhady, The Colonial Image: Australian Painting 1800–1880 (Chippendale, Australia: Ellsyd Press, 1987). 395 Tim Bonyhady, The Colonial Image: Australian Painting 1800–1880 (Chippendale, Australia: Ellsyd Press, 1987), p.26. 396 Tim Bonyhady, The Colonial Image: Australian Painting 1800–1880 (Chippendale, Australia: Ellsyd Press, 1987), p.26. 152 early British exploration of North America. The crucial element in the development of landscape painting in Tasmania was the arrival of free settlers such as Glover who, unlike the military officials and convicts, were to become landowners. They looked upon the colony not as a place of exile, but as a place to settle, to own and as a place where they would put down their roots.

As David Hansen notes when discussing My Harvest Home (Figure 87), ‘This is, after all, Glover’s picture, Glover’s land, Glover’s crop ... My Harvest Home

Figure 87: My celebrates not only the bounty of nature but the 397 Harvest Home, John possession of property’. Glover. This is the great disparity between landscape art and natural history art. Landscapes, especially the large oil paintings, are works of appropriation, of ownership, of possession, of tenure, of occupancy of the land. They are also for the most part masculine in nature; painted to show either, as in Glover’s case the painter’s own land, or commissioned to show the owner’s (almost always male) land. Natural history art, with its blank background examines an individual specimen. The drawings are often created by artists with no claim to the land from which the specimen is taken, and away from the specimen’s natural surroundings.

As Glover was creating his Tasmanian landscapes, interest in the natural history of the island, both local and international, continued.

Scientific expeditions

The French navigator Jules-Sébastien-César Dumont d'Urville (1790–1842)398 visited the shores in November 1839.399 Accounts of the expeditions Voyage

397 David Hansen, John Glover and the Colonial Picturesque (Hobart: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 2003), p.216. 398 Dumont d'Urville, born in 1790 in Normandy, joined the navy in 1807. Early in his career he developed interests in linguistics and botany. While travelling in the Mediterranean in 1820 he was responsible for obtaining the statue of Venus de Milo for the Government of 153

Autour Du Monde De L'astrolabe Et De La Zelee, Sous Les Ordres Du Contre-Amiral Dumont-D'urville, Pendant Les Annees 1837, 38, 39 Et 40 / Par Elie Le

Figure 88: Adelie Guillou ; Ouvrage Enrichi De Nombreux Dessins Et De penguins. Notes Scientifiques, Mis En Ordre Par J. Arago, and Voyage de la corvette l'Astrolabe : exécute pendant les annés 1826–1827–1828–1829. Atlas / sous le commandement de Jules Dumont d'Urville, captaine de vaisseau,400 are held in the University of Tasmania’s Morris Miller Rare Books library as well as the State Library of Tasmania (Figure 88).

The State Library of Tasmania also holds copies of d’Úrville’s Voyage Au Pole Sud Et Dans L'oceanie: Sur Les Corvettes L'astrolabe Et La Zelee, Execute Par Ordre Du Roi Pendant Les Annees 1837, 1838, 1839, 1840 Sous Le Commandement De J. Dumont D'urville, Capitaine De Vaisseau and Voyage De Decouvertes De L'astrolabe, Execute Pendant Les Annees 1826, 1827, 1828, Et 1829. Observations Nautiques, Meteorologiques, Hydrographiques Et De Physique.401 as well as English translations of these works.

France, for which he received the Légion d'honneur. He made his first voyage around the world under Duperrey, in the Coquille, in 1822–25. On their second expedition to Tasmania, they determined the approximate position of the southern magnetic pole before heading back to Tasmania and New Zealand arriving back in Toulon France on November the 7th 1840. Marian Jameson, Bright and Beautiful (Hobart: State Library of Tasmania, 2007). 399 Paul Ward, Jules Sebastian César Dumont D'urville: L'astrolabe and Zéléé 1837–1840, 2010, Available: http://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/History/antarctic_whos_who_du mont_durville_astrolabe_zelee.htm, 4 May 2010. 400 Elie Le Guillou, Voyage Autour Du Monde De L'astrolabe Et De La Zelee, Sous Les Ordres Du Contre-Amiral Dumont-D'urville, Pendant Les Annees 1837, 38, 39 Et 40 / Par Elie Le Guillou ; Ouvrage Enrichi De Nombreux Dessins Et De Notes Scientifiques, Mis En Ordre Par J. Arago (Paris: Berquet et Petion, 1842), Voyage De La Corvette L'astrolabe Execute Pendant Les Annees 1826-1827-1828-1829 Sous Le Commandement De M. Jules Dumont D'urville, Capitaine De Vaisseau. Atlas (Paris: J. Tastu, 1833). 401 Jules-Sebastien-Cesar Dumont d'Urville, Voyage Au Pole Sud Et Dans L'oceanie : Sur Les Corvettes L'astrolabe Et La Zelee, Execute Par Ordre Du Roi Pendant Les Annees 1837, 1838, 1839, 1840 Sous Le Commandement De J. Dumont D'urville, Capitaine De 154

A number of natural history artists worked on these publications, some travelling with him on his expeditions, while others worked from specimens

collected during the travels. The artists include: Jean Figure 89: Durville crab by Borromée. Gabriel Prêtre, the principal zoological artist for the first voyage; and for the second there were specialists— Werner and Borromée for mammals, Borromée for crustaceans (Figure 89), Blanchard for insects and Oudart for birds and mammals (Figure 90).

Figure 90: Kangurroode la Shortly after d’Urville visited Hobart, James Clark Ross’ Nouvelle Hollande, by Oudart. Antarctic expedition also visited the colony in 1840. On board was the young Assistant Surgeon and Naturalist Joseph Dalton Hooker. Dr Joseph Dalton Hooker joined the James Clark Ross expedition in the Erebus and Terror hoping that an exploration expedition to the southern oceans would help to establish his career in botany. He would later publish the results of his research from the expedition, including Flora Tasmaniae (Figure 91). Figure 91: Dianella tasmanica from Flora Tasmaniae. He spent a total of six months in Tasmania, three in the spring of 1840 and three in the autumn of 1841.402 During that time he was able to accompany the local botanist , or a guide provided by Gunn, to a range of localities and habitats. Hooker wrote of this; ‘I can recall no happier weeks of my wanderings over the globe, than those spent with Mr Gunn, collecting in the Tasmanian mountains and forests, or studying our plants in his library, with the works of our predecessors Labillardière and

Vaisseau. Histoire Du Voyage / Par M. Dumont D'urville : Publie Par Ordonnance De Sa Majeste Sous La Direction Superieure De M. Jacquinot (Paris: Gide, 1855), Jules- Sebastien-Cesar Dumont d'Urville, Voyage De Decouvertes De L'astrolabe, Execute Pendant Les Annees 1826, 1827, 1828, Et 1829. Observations Nautiques, Meteorologiques, Hydrographiques Et De Physique (Paris: Public par le Ministere de la Marine, 1833). 402 Joseph Dalton Hooker, The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of H. M. Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror in the Years 1839–1843, under the Command of Captain Sir James Clark Ross: Flora Tasmaniae (London: Lovell Reeve, 1859), Introduction. 155

Brown’.403 Hooker continued his father’s tradition in establishing a network of local correspondents who sent specimens to him at Kew Gardens. Upon his return to England in 1843, Hooker started work on a set of floras from the expedition, which are discussed later in this thesis.

When Hooker arrived in Hobart he was impressed by the enthusiasm for the sciences he found in the fledgling colony. The Governor John Franklin, himself an Arctic explorer and naturalist, had gathered around him a small, but enthusiastic group of ‘amateur’ scientists. These ‘amateur’ scientists were not only men, Franklin’s wife, Jane, also had a keen interest in the topic, as did a number of women artists. Franklin and his wife embarked upon the formation of a society interested in the natural history of the island. Franklin had been urged in Britain ‘by men of the greatest eminence in Natural History and Science to communicate to them information on the subjects of their respective pursuits’.404 It was not difficult for Franklin to establish interest in a scientific society, for as Hoare notes, ‘Even amidst the ‘inflammatory propensities of our oddly constituted community’405 of Van Diemen’s Land Franklin found the seeds of a scientific group’.406 Members of the former scientific society were still in Tasmania. Ronald Campbell Gunn, who had been corresponding with William Jackson Hooker, as well as sending him specimens of Tasmania’s fauna and flora for a number of years, was at this time living in Hobart. On the history of this fledgling society Banks and Brown write, ‘The Society first met on 14 October 1843 as the Van Diemen's Land Horticultural and Botanical

403 Joseph Dalton Hooker, The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of H. M. Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror in the Years 1839–1843, under the Command of Captain Sir James Clark Ross: Flora Tasmaniae (London: Lovell Reeve, 1859), Introduction. 404 The Tasmanian Society, Hobart, 3 October, 1843, p.1, cited in Michael Edward Hoare, ""All Things Are Queer and Opposite": Scientific Societies in Tasmania in the 1840s," Isis 60.2 (1969). 405 Franklin to Sir John Herschel, 2 Nov. 1838, Herschel Correspondence (H5, 7.359), Royal Society of London. Microfilm in possession of the author. This material is quoted and used with the kind permission of the Council of the Royal Society, cited in Michael Edward Hoare, ""All Things Are Queer and Opposite": Scientific Societies in Tasmania in the 1840s," Isis 60.2 (1969). 406 Michael Edward Hoare, ""All Things Are Queer and Opposite": Scientific Societies in Tasmania in the 1840s," Isis 60.2 (1969), p.200. 156

Society with the aim 'to develop the physical character of the island and illustrate its natural history and productions’. The infant Society received a Royal Warrant in September 1844 and became the Royal Society for Horticulture, Botany and the passage of the 'Royal Society Act' by the Legislative Council of Van Diemen's Land (18 Vict. No 4).407 The society was composed of both free settlers and members of the military governors of the colony.

Convicts

When Mary Morton Allport and Louisa Anne Meredith arrived in Tasmania in the 1830s it was primarily a penal colony, with still only a small population of free settlers. These twofold functions, being both a gaol and a colony of free- settlers, would lead inexorably to conflicts between imperial and colonial interests. The free colonists profited by the convict establishment, which provided them with a market for their products and a cheap labour force, but they resented the arbitrary form of government by a lieutenant-governor and a Legislative Council of his chief officials and government nominees. While he served as lieutenant-governor of the newly established colony, George Arthur408 had given primacy to the penal purpose of the colony, but the free colonists believed that their interests should come first.409 Not only were the military government’s interests given precedence by the Governor, but the cost of maintaining this system was beginning to fall more heavily upon the small group of free settlers, who, it must be remembered had no freely elected representatives to advance their cause.

From 1 July 1836, the British Government refused to pay for the heavy police costs involved in running the colony and required the newly arrived Governor John Franklin (and later, his successor Eardley-Wilmot) to fund the police and

407 MR Banks and AV Brown, Draft Report on the Art Collection of the Royal Society of Tasmania (Hobart: The Council of the Royal Society of Tasmania, 2002), p.5. 408 George Arthur (1784–1854), 1824 –1836. 409 Australian National Univerity, John Franklin, Available: http://adbonline anu.edu.au/biogs/A010380b.htm, 29 April 2010. 157 gaols from local funds [taxes]. This created tension between Governor, the Legislative Council and the colonists, and made the funding of the police controversial.410

Review

The 1830s saw an increasing number of free settlers migrate to Tasmania to establish new roots. A number of these settlers were keen naturalists, who, through their interest in the natural history, began to assimilate to life in their new home. Women artists like Mary Morton Allport and Louisa Anne Meredith grew to view the once alien landscape in another light as they became familiar with the new plants and animals through their illustration of them.

As settlers found a growing sense of belonging to their new home, so too did their need for independence from the metropolitan rule grow. This rising independence can be seen in the changing role they sought with the British scientists, after all there was a fundamental difference in the natural history art practice of the professional, hardcore illustrators and naturalists such as the Goulds and Hooker, who moved from country to country, continent to continent, seeing this as a commercial as well as a scientific opportunity, and the local women artists, like Allport and Meredith, who were seeking to emplace their illustrations.

As the free settlers were beginning to form a sense of belonging to their new home, the nature of their relationship with the metropolitan scientists was changing as Jim Endersby notes, ‘the seemingly mundane business of picking and pressing flowers proves to be a way of constructing imperial relationships: when a collector in some remote land accepted the authority of a distant metropolitan expert by following his guidance as to what and how to collect, he or she was simultaneously accepting a subordinate role and thus a colonized

410 Stefan Petrow, "After Arthur: Policing in Van Diemen's Land 1827–46," Policing the Lucky Country, eds. M. Enders and B. Dupont (Sydney: Hawkins Press, 2001). 158 status. On the other hand, as some of these collectors worked to improve their expertise, they came to realize that it was their metropolitan correspondents who were becoming dependent...this realization could make collectors more demanding in their dealings with the metropolis, forcing a renegotiation of relations between those at the centre and those on the imperial periphery’.411 The continued interest in their fauna and flora by the metropolitan scientists influenced the local artists and scientists to review their way of thinking about their environment and their privilege to the unique land, especially amongst the growing Tasmanian-born population.

411 Jim Endersby, Imperial Nature: Joseph Hooker and the Practices of Victorian Science (London: The University of Chicago Press, 2008), p.55. 159

Chapter Six The Tasmanian—living in the centre—1847 to 1901

What begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value.412

By the mid-1800s, children born to the first free settlers arriving in Tasmania began to reach adulthood. These children were now the first Europeans to be born and to grow up in the colony—children of the periphery.

Would they as the first native-born colonists, having now had a lifelong association with the colony, judge their environment and the fauna and flora around them as the familiar, the ordinary, the normal? Would the wilderness that surrounded them no longer be alien or feared? Would they consider Tasmania ‘home’? Could they now follow Yi-Fu Tuan’s proposition that people always see themselves and their place as the centre and, ‘regard their own homeland [my emphasis] as the centre of the world? A people who believe they are at the centre claim, implicitly, the ineluctable worth of their location’413 and it would therefore follow that until you consider a place to be your home-land, you do not consider that place to be the centre.

It is also true that new space must be re-imagined as place before it can become the centre for an emerging society. As these new settlers lived their lives in, and transformed, the new historyless, memoryless space they inhabited, would they imagine it with a new perspective; would they begin to visualize it as place—‘Space is transformed into place as it acquires definition and meaning ... What begins as undifferentiated space become place as we get

412 Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press, 1977), p.6. 413 Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press, 1977), p.149. 160 to know it better and endow it with value’. 414 The perception of space being transformed into place is essential to a settler society for it to begin the move toward an individual identity and sense of belonging to ‘place’. Natural history artists such as Mary Morton Allport and Louisa Anne Meredith used their art practice to transform the undifferentiated space into place when they chose to paint individual specimens of the countless unfamiliar plants and animals that surrounded them in their new home. In breaking down the overwhelming unfamiliar into single pieces they became more and more familiar with the environment and more and more at home in it. Jeff Malpas asserts, ‘There is good reason to suppose that the human relationship to place is a fundamental structure in what makes possible the sort of life that is characteristically human, while also determining ... human identity’.415

In the period of the mid-1800s, Van Diemen’s Land was moving towards becoming Tasmania. The population was agitating for ‘responsible government’ and for the cessation of convict transportation. Also the idea of an Australian Federation was beginning to form in the colonies and with it a growing sense of a national identity, an identity separate to that of the British founders. In 1886 the authors of the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia noted, ‘We are now in full motion as a nation, and our future career is pregnant with hope. Within the next century Australasia will have taken her place amongst the great nations of the earth’.416

What role would natural history art have for these children of the periphery? One little known Tasmanian-born natural history illustrator would have a significant part to play in demonstrating how a settler society begins to make the move towards forming their own society and begins to gain a sense of

414 Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press, 1977), p.136 and p.6. 415 J. E. Malpas, Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p.13. 416 Ure Smith, Picturesque Atlas of Australasia: Facsimile Ed., Cover Title: Australia: The First Hundred Years, Being a Fascimilie of Volumes I & Ii of the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia, 1888. Originally Published in 3 V.: Sydney, Picturesque Atlas Publishing Co., 1886–88 (Sydney: 1974), Introduction. 161 belonging to the new land and to form their own identity, separate from that of their imperial rulers. In this chapter I will examine the works of two Tasmanian-born artists; William Archer (1820–1874) who is regarded as the first Australian-born botanical illustrator and botanist; 417 and William Charles Piguenit (1836–1914), who is considered the first Australian-born professional artist. Piguenit is renowned for his landscapes, particularly those of the Tasmanian wilderness.

Archer and Piguenit, although both Tasmania-born had differing influences that informed their concept of ‘home’ and ‘land’; Archer being the son of a freeborn migrant landowner, while Piguenit was the son of a convict.

William Archer

William Archer (1820–1874) was born in Longford, in the north of Tasmania in 1820, the son of a wealthy property owner, his father and uncles having settled in Tasmania in 1813 (Figure 92).

Archer was an intriguing man. Although a much Figure 92: William Archer. neglected figure in history— always overshadowed by fellow botanical collector Ronald Campbell Gunn418—he

417 Helen Hewson, Australia: 300 Years of Botanical Illustration (Collingwood, Vic: CSIRO Publishing, 1999), p.112. 418 Ronald Campbell Gunn (1808–1881) was born in Cape Castle, . He migrated to Tasmania in 1830 where he became assistant superintendent of convicts at Launceston. Later he became the private secretary to Sir John Franklin and clerk of the Legislative and Executive Councils in 1840. In 1855 he was elected to the Launceston seat of the Legislative Council, and then the Selby seat in the House of Assembly. When he resigned from parliament in 1860, he was appointed deputy-commissioner of crown lands. In addition to leading this busy public life, Gunn was an energetic botanist. Through Robert William Lawrence, he became a plant collector for W. J. Hooker of Glasgow University. In Hobart he became secretary of the Horticultural Society and of the Tasmanian Society, assisted Joseph Dalton Hooker on many local excursions when the Clarke-Ross expedition visited Van Diemen’s Land in 1840. In 1850 he sent a living Tasmanian tiger (thylacine) to the British Museum. He was also elected a fellow of the Linnean Society of London in 162 is remarkable in showing the conceptual movement of a settler society from periphery to centre, from being the ‘other’ to the ‘self’ as that society forms a sense of belonging to place. This movement is demonstrated in the two very different journeys Archer made to England, the first from Van Diemen’s Land in 1836, and the second from Tasmania in 1857.

His first voyage was made as a youth of sixteen when he was sent ‘home’ to England to study architecture and engineering.419 The second, more significant, journey was made in 1857 to work with Joseph Dalton Hooker on Flora Tasmaniae, Hooker’s publication on Tasmania’s botany. On the first journey, Archer sailed to England as a colonial returning to the metropolitan centre to gain knowledge; knowledge unattainable at the periphery. However, on the second voyage, Archer returned to England as the bearer of expertise and local knowledge unattainable at the metropolitan centre. Archer brought with him on that second voyage his intimate knowledge of the botany of his ‘home’ and a collection of outstanding illustrations of the native orchids growing there.

Why, if we concur with John Crowley’s argument that artists ‘appropriated the conquests visually with topographic renderings of the empire’s new landscapes’,420 and my assertion that the role would not be replicated in Tasmania until free settlers arrived in the colony, did Archer not also paint landscapes? Why did he decide to follow a natural history illustration route, and not follow the example of landscape artist John Glover discussed in the previously?

1850 and of the Royal Society in 1854. In 1878 he presented his private herbarium to The Royal Society of Tasmania, whence it went to the National Herbarium, Sydney. Gunn was a first-rate botanist whose contribution was commemorated in Sir Joseph Hooker's introduction to his Flora Tasmaniae. TE Burns and JR Skemp, Gunn, Ronald Campbell (1808–1881), 2006, Australian National University, Available: http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A010448b.htm, 30 March 2009 419 Brenden Lennard, "William Archer (1820–1874)," The Royal Society of Tasmania Papers and Proceedings 27.3 September (1980), p.103. On his return to Tasmania in 1842, Archer, for family reasons had to take over the management of the property Woolmers. He found little opportunity for paid work in architecture in the colony. 420 John E. Crowley, "'Taken on the Spot': The Visual Appropriation of New France for the Global British Landscape," The Canadian Historical Review 86.1, March (2005), p.1. 163

Unlike John Glover who moved to Tasmania and acquired land, William Archer was born into property; lands already appropriated by his family before him. He did not need to declare newly acquired ownership through the painting of his land; it was already his from birth. Archer looked to the natural history of his land for inspiration—gazing into the depth of his land rather than wondering at the breadth of it. Archer could also, as a wealthy estate owner, become a devotee of the gentlemanly pursuit of scientific inquiry, in the vein of his British landed-gentry counterparts. Indeed, he lived in one of the most intriguing places for scientific inquiry in the second scientific revolution—the antipodes.

After returning to Tasmania in 1842, Archer began his interest in natural history in earnest. He joined The Royal Society of Tasmania, becoming a member on 2 June 1847, and subsequently became a Fellow of the Society in February 1849.421 Archer also joined the worldwide network of correspondents and collectors that the Hookers, Sir William and Joseph Dalton, had established. It was enlisting in this network and his unique response to it that led Archer to have that function of demonstrating the growing sense of belonging to place of a settler society.

Unlike the majority of the Hookers’ colonial correspondents,422 Archer saw himself and his role as more than merely a colonial collector of specimens whose sole responsibility was to send those specimens to Kew Gardens to be classified and named by the metropolitan experts. In the first entry of his 1848 diary he states, ‘Jan 1st. If I can manage it, I will collect & write a description of the grasses indigenous to Tasmania’.423 Perhaps it was a combination of his education and his being a member of a powerful landholding dynasty in Tasmania that led him to believe it was his right to also study and describe the

421 The Royal Society of Tasmania, "Fellows and Honorary Members," Papers and Proceedings (1849). 422 The New Zealand correspondent, , like Archer, also described and named his specimens. The different response Joseph Hooker had to these two men will be discussed later. 423 William Archer, Archer, W. Diaries 1847–74 . 164 flora he was collecting. But, perhaps it was also, more importantly, a growing sense of belonging to his birthplace, his homeland, that motivated him.

Growing political tensions

That sense of belonging to Tasmania is also seen in Archer’s political leanings. Towards the middle of the nineteenth century, the free settlers of Tasmania began to object to the British government’s imposition of increased taxation to pay for the convict system at a time when they had no elected representation in the government of the colony.

The authors of Picturesque Atlas of Australasia note, ‘A turning point had now arrived in the history of Van Diemen’s Land, and its free population found itself confronted by two alternatives. Either it must consent to succumb to, and be overwhelmed by, the criminal and servile element—for there were upwards of twenty gangs of ‘probationers’, numbering from 100 to 500 each, working in different parts of the colony—or it must resolve, as it soon afterwards did, that transportation should cease’.424 The movement for the abolition of transportation in the colony and for freely elected representation that had begun in the turbulent early 1840s reached its climax in the 1850s. The tumult reached such a crescendo that it could no longer be ignored by the imperial British Government.

The Reverend John West and others had formed the Anti-transportation League425 in Launceston in 1849, and by 1851 it had developed into the

424 Ure Smith, Picturesque Atlas of Australasia: Facsimile Ed., Cover Title: Australia: The First Hundred Years, Being a Fascimilie of Volumes I & Ii of the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia, 1888. Originally Published in 3 V.: Sydney, Picturesque Atlas Publishing Co., 1886–88 (Sydney: 1974), p.500. 425 Ure Smith, Picturesque Atlas of Australasia: Facsimile Ed., Cover Title: Australia: The First Hundred Years, Being a Fascimilie of Volumes I & Ii of the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia, 1888. Originally Published in 3 V.: Sydney, Picturesque Atlas Publishing Co., 1886–88 (Sydney: 1974), p.501. 165

Australasian League for the Abolition of Transportation,426 which soon became a powerful political force in the upcoming elections for responsible government in Tasmania. In 1854, despite the misgivings of the Governor (1804–1871), recommendations were set in motion for Tasmania to have responsible government.427

Politically, William Archer was a member of the group at the forefront of gaining independence from their imperial rulers. Archer became a member of the first freely elected in the mid-1850s—elected to the Legislative Council seat of Westbury on an anti-transportation platform.428 In 1853 transportation of convicts to the colony was abolished, and in the same year Van Diemen’s Land was officially renamed Tasmania by the Parliament of which Archer was a Member.429

Flora Tasmaniae

While a Member of Parliament, Archer continued to pursue his interest in natural history. As a member of the Tasmanian government, Archer was instrumental in securing a government grant of £350430 for his British botanical correspondent Joseph Dalton Hooker toward the publication of his research on the Tasmanian flora. Archer personally contributed a further £100431 for the production of coloured illustrative plates. The noted botanist William Harvey after visiting Archer in Tasmania wrote to JD Hooker of Archer’s role in

426 C. H. Currey, Denison, Sir William Thomas (1804–1871), 1972, Australian National University, Available: http://www.adb.online.anu.au/biogs/A)40048b.htm, 31 August 2010 427 C. H. Currey, Denison, Sir William Thomas (1804–1871), 1972, Australian National University, Available: http://www.adb.online.anu.au/biogs/A)40048b.htm, 31 August 2010 428 Tasmanian Parliamentary Library – List of past representatives. 429 Ure Smith, Picturesque Atlas of Australasia: Facsimile Ed., Cover Title: Australia: The First Hundred Years, Being a Fascimilie of Volumes I & Ii of the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia, 1888. Originally Published in 3 V.: Sydney, Picturesque Atlas Publishing Co., 1886–88 (Sydney: 1974), p.503. 430 Jim Endersby, Imperial Nature: Joseph Hooker and the Practices of Victorian Science (London: The University of Chicago Press, 2008), p.97. 431 Helen Hewson, Australia: 300 Years of Botanical Illustration (Collingwood, Vic: CSIRO Publishing, 1999), p.111. 166 securing the grant, ‘I like him very much—& I need not tell you that he is a warm friend & admirer of yours. You have had substantial proof thereof already—the Tasmanian grant to your flora having been altogether his device, management & doing’.432 Archer wrote to JD Hooker of the grant and of his own financial contribution in a letter dated July 26 1854:433

I was very much gratified at receiving your welcome reply to my communication respecting the grant of our Council to you…therefore I authorize you (& enclose a draft) to apply to my agent in London…for £100, to meet any additional expenses that you may incur on their [the orchid drawings] account…

JD Hooker notes in the Preface of Flora Tasmaniae:

I had the unexpected gratification of receiving from the Governor and Parliament of Tasmania the announcement that they had unanimously awarded me a grant of £350, in consideration of my services in the investigation of the Flora of the Southern Hemisphere, especially that of Tasmania.434

Archer attempted to have a work on the flora of Tasmania published in the colony. He had written to Ronald Campbell Gunn in February 1849:

It would be well (would it not?) if you were to publish the Flora of Tasmania by subscription. Many persons would assist in bringing out a scientific work that would not purchase it when published. Now, I will give £5, then there are the members of the Tasmanian and Royal Societies, including the Bishop (who told me he would subscribe) the Governor, Puchins, Lillie, Davies, Allport, Henly, Pugh and many, many others. 435

For whatever reasons, the production of a locally produced flora proved impossible, and Archer resolved to go to England to work with JD Hooker on his publication Flora Tasmaniae. In going to the metropolis from the periphery

432 Sophie Charlotte Ducker, ed., The Contented Botanist: Letters of W.H. Harvey About Australia and the Pacific, (Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 1988), pp.195– 196. 433 William Archer, Letters to W and Jd Hooker DC 218, 22–23. 434 Joseph Dalton Hooker, The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of H. M. Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror in the Years 1839–1843, under the Command of Captain Sir James Clark Ross: Flora Tasmaniae (London: Lovell Reeve, 1859). 435 Ronald Campbell Gunn, Gunn's Correspondence, Ns 1313/1/1 167 with his expertise Archer created a monumental shift in the periphery/centre paradigm between Tasmania and Britain. No longer would the exchange of scientific expertise be a one-way conversation. No longer would the acquisition of scientific knowledge belong solely to the metropolitan expert; the local knowledge of the colonial ‘other’ also had to be considered. When Archer made the pragmatic decision to go to England to work with JD Hooker, he no longer saw himself as merely the provincial collector sending material to the metropolitan centre, but saw himself as a collaborator contributing as a respected scientist and illustrator. In this new vision of his role he truly fitted Tuan’s concept of ‘everyone sees their own place as the centre’.436

William Archer’s illustrations—in place, in context

Today William Archer is known primarily for his illustrations of native Tasmanian orchids and fungi in JD Hooker’s Flora Tasmaniae published in 1860. This was the third part of Hooker’s publication The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of HM Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror, in the Years 1839–1843, on which he began working in 1843 after returning to England from that epic voyage of exploration and scientific research.437 Hooker dedicated Flora Tasmaniae to William Archer and Ronald Campbell Gunn. Unlike the illustrations of the artists, such as Redouté, Lesueur and Bauer previously discussed, in which the specimens were out of place and out of context, the flora of Archer’s illustrations were being created by an artist who lived and painted at the place these plants grew. They were in place and in context. This can be illustrated by one simple element of Archer’s drawings.

Archer was the first, and only, one of the artists studied for this thesis to add notes on the location and growing habits of the plants he drew to the illustrations.

436 Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press, 1977). 437 (1847) and Flora Novae Zealand (1855) comprise the other two titles of the set The Botany–The Antarctic Voyage of HM Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror, in the Years 1839–1843. 168

Of Prasophylum archeri [today named Corunastylis archeri (Hook.f.) D.L. Jones & M.A. Clem.]438 (Figure 93), Archer notes:

“Hab. Cheshunt, and near Garrett’s Sugar-loaf, in moist poor soil.

Obs. From 3–8 flowers. Height 7 to 9 or 10 inches. Figure 93: Prasophylum Flowering-time the latter end of Summer. Apparently a archeri (now Corunastylis rare species.” archeri). Unlike scientists and artists who visited Tasmania for a brief time, only to return to the metropolitan centre, Archer illustrated plants that grew in places he knew; places that were familiar to him, places that were named: Cheshunt, the property he owned, Garrett’s Sugar-loaf (now Quamby Bluff), the mountain he could see on the horizon of that property. Places he could, and did, return to again and again over many years to collect specimens. The plants Archer drew did not come from a briefly seen nameless, unknown space at the periphery of the empire, but from a defined familiar place—his home.

While Charles-Alexandre Lesueur’s sketch of the elephant seal (Figure 28) bears the co-ordinates n0 56’, they are an anonymous description added later by François Péron.439 Péron does not name the location where the illustration was completed, in this case King Island, off the north-west coast of Tasmania, because to him it was an unspecified, nameless space. At the time Lesueur and Péron sailed to King Island with Baudin in 1801, it was both literally and figuratively unnamed to Europeans. The island was given its European name by Matthew Flinders on his expedition of the same time.

438 Corunastylis archeri (Hook.f.) D.L. Jones & M.A. Clem., was named after William Archer who collected the type specimen for this species. 439 Jacqueline Bonnemains, Elliott Christopher Forsyth, Bernard William Smith, Charles Alexandre Lesueur and Nicolas Martin Petit, eds., Baudin in Australian Waters: The Artwork of the French Voyage of Discovery to the Southern Lands, 1800–1804, (Melbourne: Oxford University Press in association with the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 1988), p.338. 169

The orchid illustrations

Flora Tasmaniae contains 27 plates of native orchids, featuring 56 species. Of these plates Archer is attributed as artist on all but one, where Walter Hood Fitch440 is named as delineator. While Archer was working with JD Hooker on Flora Tasmaniae a dispute arose concerning the attribution of Fitch as delineator (and not only as lithographer) on the orchid illustrations. Archer wrote to JD Hooker:

1857 August 24th – To Kew. Received part 4 of the Flora of Tasmania from Dr. Hooker. Mr. Fitch is lithographing the drawings of orchids, and adds his name to mine as delineating them, somewhat unfairly I think, for at the most he only adds a flower or two, and an unnecessary drawing of a Figure 94: dissection—excepting in a very few cases. Caladenia However, I told Dr. Hooker, that I did not care filamentosa by Archer (top). much about it so that the drawings were well done, and the orchids well-illustrated. The drawings which I shall present to the Linnean Society will show what I have done in the matter.441 The figure (Figure 94) shows, on the top, Archer’s illustration of Caladenia filamentosa.Br, and below, the illustration in Flora Tasmaniae attributed to both Archer and Fitch as delineators.

440 (1817–1892) Born in Glasgow. Hooker employed him as a botanical artist (around 1833), and his work began to be published in 1834 in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine. Fitch went on to become one of the most prolific botanical illustrators of all time. One estimate is that he achieved over 12,000 published drawings. Fitch was an extremely fast and accurate illustrator and became renowned for his added ability of being able to mentally ‘reconstitute’ a plant from its pressed state on an herbarium sheet into a realistic 3D illustration. Most other illustrators had to work from live plant material to achieve a satisfactory image. When Sir William Hooker was appointed Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens in 1841 and moved to London, Fitch chose to follow him. Helen Hewson, Australia: 300 Years of Botanical Illustration (Collingwood, Vic: CSIRO Publishing, 1999), p.96. 441 William Archer, Archer, W. Diaries 1847–74 170

Archer did indeed, as he noted in his diary entry above, donate a set of 36 illustrations used in Flora Tasmaniae to the Linnean Society, where they are still held today. These illustrations show Archer’s mastery as a botanical illustrator and botanist with their exquisite detail and delicate colours, which allows us to identify the orchids today.

Hooker, however, acknowledged Archer’s contribution to Flora Tasmaniae when he wrote:

On the other hand I have derived the greatest assistance from Mr Archer’s drawings, notes, and specimens, as well as from his intimate acquaintance with the living plants. 442

The significance of local knowledge of the environment, and the expertise that could only be gained by living long-term through the seasons, when observing the flora of a place was beginning to be understood by the metropolitan experts. 443

442 Joseph Dalton Hooker, The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of H. M. Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror in the Years 1839–1843, under the Command of Captain Sir James Clark Ross: Flora Tasmaniae (London: Lovell Reeve, 1859), part III, vol. II Introduction Monocots. 443 It should be noted that Hooker was not always so obliging in acknowledging the provincial expertise of his correspondents. In the mid-nineteenth century botanists were greatly divided on defining species divided between ‘lumpers’ like Hooker, who usually looked at botany from a global perspective, interested in world-wide plant distribution, and ‘splitters’ who usually worked on local environments and were inclined to examined these areas more closely—the metropolis (centre) and the province (periphery). Those who had power—the men of the metropolis—could control what was published and who was recognized within these publications. As Endersby notes, ‘One of Hooker's preferred strategies for abolishing the names that had been conferred by colonial or provincial naturalists was to compare the specimens the local naturalists had relied on with the much wider range he had available at Kew. Hooker argued that a global comparison demonstrated that the apparently distinct forms to which the local botanist had given names were in fact linked by intermediate forms from around the world. The varieties of the plant could then be lumped together as a single species, a process that, not surprisingly, many local collectors objected to, since it removed "their" names from the botanical record.” (Jim Endersby, Imperial Nature: Joseph Hooker and the Practices of Victorian Science (London: The University of Chicago Press, 2008), p.19.). 171

This local expertise was called upon on many occasions. For example, Archer wrote in his diary of the difficulty Hooker and he had in settling on the number of species in Thelymitra,

Having received a letter from Dr Hooker respecting the number of species of Thelymitra, I commenced today a careful examination of my specimens, in order to assist him in determining the question.444 Today I began to make my deductions from my observations, coming to the conclusion that there are 4 species, instead of 2, as Dr Hooker thinks.445 I went to Kew to examine the Tasmanian Orchids with Dr Hooker.446 Dr H and I decided upon reducing all the species of Thelymitra to 3 & a possible 4th T. nuda, ixioides, & augustifolia, Br Prod.447

JD Hooker obviously agreed with Archer’s determination of the number of species, for he wrote:

Thelymitra – Gen 1 Thelymitra, Forst. The Tasmanian species, of which Brown had only one, may be reckoned at seven, according to Mr Archer’s and my opinions. Of these, four belong to the very distinct section Macdonaldia, which has no plumose appendages to the column, and are very distinct from one another (though it is sometimes difficult to discriminate

The colonial correspondents at the periphery argued that their local field experience enabled them to distinguish differences in species not able to be discerned in a dried herbarium specimen. Hooker’s New Zealand correspondent William Colenso (1811–1899) wrote, ‘I have also taken the ‘universal’ distinctive uses of the plant [Phorium] into consideration; and no New Zealander [ie Maori] would (or could) ever use one sp. for the other (Colenso to JDH 24/8/1854, KEW(KDC174). However, Hooker refused to concede the usefulness of indigenous knowledge and he ignored Colenso's proposed names ... From the colonial botanist's perspective, local knowledge was perhaps the best kind to have, since Hooker matched them in craft skills and excelled them in his formal botanical education – hence Hooker's repeated denials of the relevance or usefulness of such knowledge, he overruled it because acknowledging its validity would have tilted the trading terms too far in the colonists' favour (Endersby, Imperial nature: Joseph Hooker and the practices of Victorian science:). 444 Archer’s diary 24 April 1857. On the 25th he merely wrote, ‘Busy at Thelymitra”, however on the 26th he wrote, ‘I worked hard at Thelymitra, having examined, & made part drawings of a large number of specimens.” William Archer, Archer, W. Diaries 1847–74 . 445 Archer’s diary 27 April 1857. William Archer, Archer, W. Diaries 1847–74 . 446 William Archer, Archer, W. Diaries 1847–74 . 447 William Archer, Archer, W. Diaries 1847–74 . 172

dried specimens of T. carnea and T. venosa from small forms of T. nuda and ixioides).448

Archer clearly understood the vital role that natural history illustration played in discerning genera and species. He understood that from their very nature, some

Figure 95: Detail of herbarium specimens were not always the best solution. Spiranthus australis. In an early letter to Sir William Hooker (dated 27 July 1854), Archer notes, ‘I want an elementary work also on Fungi of all sorts, so as to learn their structure sufficiently to enable me to draw them—for dried, or pickled specimens are troublesome, inconvenient & unsatisfactory’.449 Archer must have realised through experience that he was not

able to obtain satisfactory herbarium specimens of the fungi, and that illustrations would be the best solution. However, he also realised that to be able to draw the plants properly he needed to understand their morphology. Like Ferdinand Bauer before him, William Archer used a Figure 96: Botanical microscope to view the dissections he made of the plants. microscope c.1840. He wanted to look into the minutia of the plant, to look into the spirit of the plant. Archer wrote in the notes accompanying his illustration of Spiranthus australis, ‘3,3a(4 diam.), 4,4a &5(10 diam.), 5a, 5b...(greatly)magn’. (Figure 95) to indicate the degree of magnification of his morphological drawings. On October 1859 Archer wrote, ‘Working at paper on Eurybia. Examined with comp’d microscope ... several species of Eurybia & Olearia..’.450 The exact model of microscope Archer used is not known,

448 Joseph Dalton Hooker, The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of H. M. Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror in the Years 1839–1843, under the Command of Captain Sir James Clark Ross: Flora Tasmaniae (London: Lovell Reeve, 1859), p.3. 449 William Archer, Letters to W and Jd Hooker DC74, 8. 450 William Archer, Archer, W. Diaries 1847–74 1859. 173 however, Figure 96 shows a botanical microscope of the time, and it is likely Archer used one similar to this.451

While Archer’s diary entries often contain references to ‘drawing orchids’, 452 they do not give any indication to the methods he used in completing his illustrations. An examination of his illustrations, particularly those of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, which contain a number of incomplete drawings, gives some indication of the methods he used. Archer, in the majority of his illustrations drew only one specific plant as his centrepiece, although he may have used several for the dissections. He refers to collecting

several specimens of the same species at the same time in his diaries.453 Archer notes in his dissection ‘Obs’. if he is using two or more separate plants for his illustration. For example, on his illustration of Chiloglottis reflexa (Labill.) Druce, Archer noted, ‘1a, was gathered in April, the proper time of flowering; 1, in the end of May. The colour is often deeper than in

Figure 97: Thelymitra this specimen’. antennifera, (top) Linnean Society and (bottom) Flora It becomes obvious on examining the Tasmanian Tasmaniae. Museum and Art Gallery illustrations and reading

451 This English botanical microscope is supplied with four objectives, which can be used singly or in different combinations to vary the magnification. In addition, it is supplied with a brass trough with glass bottom for wet work, a glass stage insert, and three wooden slides each with specimens mounted between mica disks. The main focusing adjustment is accomplished by sliding the stage up and down along the pillar while the knob on top of the pillar functions as a fine adjustment.Tal&Dai-Ichi Life (Earl of Derby) Collection of Natural History Watercolours, 2012, State Library of New State Wales, Available: http://acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/item/itemdetailpaged.aspx?itemid=940935, 19 November 2012. 452 For example, in his diary dated January 31st 1855, Archer wrote, ‘Drawing orchids, etc’., on February 20th he wrote, ‘Writing letters and sketching etc’. William Archer, Archer, W. Diaries 1847–74 . 453 Jan 7th 1848, ‘Collected some fine specimens of Antustria australis [?Sarcochilus] in flower, and made a drawing of one spike.” William Archer, Archer, W. Diaries 1847–74 . 174

Archer’s diaries that he would often work on an illustration over several days, returning again and again to make adjustments to his illustration. The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery illustrations range from a simple pencil outline of a specimen, with no dissections, pencil outlines with dissections,

partially coloured drawings through to finalised watercolour paintings (Figure 97).

At times Archer made notes on the drawing regarding the colour of the plant for later reference.

At times there are also a number of separate Figure 98: TMAG pencil illustrations of the same species. Very few of sketch and Flora Archer’s drawings are fully dated, so it is therefore Tasmaniae. difficult to detect any change in Archer’s style or expertise during his time as an illustrator. While it is noted that he returned to some illustrations repeatedly, the changes made appear to be related to knowledge gained of the species rather than an improvement as an artist. The illustrations used for Flora Tasmaniae, like those of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery’s collection range from; the earliest to the latest, pencil outlines to the most completed. There does not appear to be a noted change in artistic ability that influenced Hooker or Fitch to reject Archer’s earliest drawings in favour of more recent work (Figure 98).

In examining the collections of Archer’s illustrations at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, the Linnean Society in London and in Joseph Dalton Hooker’s Flora Tasmaniae, it can be seen that he occasionally completed several drawings of the same species over a period of time. He used several different specimens for those drawings. Something he was able to do through his ongoing access to the living plants. In doing so, Archer gradually improved his knowledge of each species he was examining, and he was able build upon his knowledge.

175

Hooker acknowledged his dependence on Archer’s local, provincial expertise and his extensive herbarium for his research on the flora of Tasmania when he wrote:

On the other hand I have derived the greatest assistance from Mr Archer’s drawings, notes, and specimens, as well as from his intimate acquaintance with the living plants . . . and I can only add, that for his having afforded me the benefit of his accurate knowledge of the species, I should in several cases have failed to discriminate them aright, and in other cases, where I had properly discriminated, to have selected their most important diagnostic characters. 454

William Archer illustrated the orchids that grew on or near his property Cheshunt near Longford in northern Tasmania. He drew the flowers over many years, collecting specimens at various times of the year. He was able, with his intimate knowledge of the plants through the seasons and through the years to gain experience and insights that were not available to the metropolitan botanists in faraway England. In his descriptions of the plants he drew, with their habitat and named locations, he changed undefined space to place, using the knowledge of one who belongs to that place.

While Archer was illustrating the flora of Tasmania, another Tasmanian-born artist began to paint the wilderness of the island instead of the usual landscapes of pastoral scenes painted by artists such as John Glover.

William Charles Piguenit

Often regarded as the first Australian-born professional painter and also the last important colonial landscape Figure 99: William painter in Australia, William Charles Piguenit (1836– Charles Piguenit. 1914) (Figure 99) was a romantic realist inspired by the

454 Joseph Dalton Hooker, The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of H. M. Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror in the Years 1839–1843, under the Command of Captain Sir James Clark Ross: Flora Tasmaniae (London: Lovell Reeve, 1859), part III, vol. II Introduction Monocots. 176

power and beauty of nature.455 Piguenit was born in Hobart on 27 August 1836 of English-born parents. His father Frederick Le Geyt Piguenit was a convict who arrived in Tasmania in 1830 onboard the Royal George.456

Piguenit, unlike Archer, did not journey to England to Figure 100: gain any formal training, although, like Archer, he did Permian Fossils. venture to Britain with his work later in his career. Piguenit was taught painting by his mother who taught art at her school for 'Young Ladies' in Hobart,457 and also had painting lessons from Scottish artist Frank Dunnett.458 In the late 1840s Piguenit began attending Cambridge House Academy from where he graduated in 1849 at the age of thirteen, noted particularly for his superior penmanship, drawing and mapping abilities. Some months later, at the age of fourteen, he was appointed draftsman in the mapping office of the Colonial Survey Department, where he was to work for the next twenty-three years459 before leaving to become a full-time painter.460

Like William Archer before him, Piguenit was also interested in natural history illustration. He completed a number of drawings of fossilised shells for Charles Gould in 1868 (Figure 100). According to Christa Johannes and Anthony Brown

455 Christa E. Johannes and Anthony V. Brown, W. C. Piguenit Retrospective (Hobart: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 1992), p.9. 456 Tasmania Archives, Frederick Piguenit, 18 October 1830, Available: http://portal.archives.tas.gov.au, 5 December 2012. See also "A Veteran Artist Mr Wc Piguenit: Tasmanian Scenery." The Mercury 25 April 1912, .p6, 457 Australian Dictionary of Biography Online Edition, William Charles Piguenit, 1974, Melbourne University Press, Available: http://adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A050490b.htm, 28 June 2011, Christa E. Johannes and Anthony V. Brown, W. C. Piguenit Retrospective (Hobart: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 1992). 458 Australian Dictionary of Biography Online Edition, William Charles Piguenit, 1974, Melbourne University Press, Available: http://adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A050490b.htm, 28 June 2011. 459 Christa E. Johannes and Anthony V. Brown, W. C. Piguenit Retrospective (Hobart: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 1992), p.10. 460 "The Late Mr W. C. Piguenit." Sydney Morning Herald 20 July 1914, p.11. 177 these drawings were intended to be included in Upon the Geological Structure and Mineral Resources of Tasmania, a work that was never published.461

Piguenit’s landscapes

William Charles Piguenit is principally recognised as a landscape artist, a painter of hauntingly atmospheric mountain vistas of his island home. In 1897, the Figure 101: Mt Olympus. Launceston Examiner noted, ‘He loves to depict natural scenery, as he sees it, with all the faithfulness of a naturalist,’462 an interesting choice of words, given the topic of this thesis. The Mercury in 1903 described his work thus, ‘The artist whose many studies of Tasmanian landscape have shown his sympathy with Nature in her aspects of bleak isolation and rugged grandeur.’463

Of particular note are a series of monochrome landscapes held at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (Figure 101), in which Piguenit captures the light, serenity and otherworldliness of the mountainous Tasmanian wilderness so wonderfully. Christa Johannes and Anthony Brown state, ‘Piguenit painted [these monochromes] based on sketches of his 1871, 1873, 1874 and 1887 trips into the Western Highlands of Tasmania, to illustrate his lecture on the subject to the Fourth Meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science held in Hobart in January 1892’.464 However, Jonathan Holmes contends that these monochrome illustrations were painted

461 Christa E. Johannes and Anthony V. Brown, W. C. Piguenit Retrospective (Hobart: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 1992), p.12. 462 "Mr Piguenit’s Latest Painting." Launceston Examiner 27 June 1879, p.2. 463 "Mr W.C. Piguenit." The Mercury 1 April 1903, p.7. 464 Christa E. Johannes and Anthony V. Brown, W. C. Piguenit Retrospective (Hobart: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 1992), p.104, see also "Willam Charles Piguenit: An Australian Painter." The Mercury 9 January 1906, p.8.. 178

for the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia,465 and that they were in monochrome so they could be photographed.466

Figure 102: The Where the Tasmanian-born William Archer was the first Frenchman's Cap of the natural history artists discussed in this thesis, to from the western flank of Mount consider the importance of the location of his specimens Arrowsmith. WC by adding notes to his illustrations, Piguenit is the first Piguenit. landscape artist to choose the untamed wilderness for his subject matter. Unlike John Glover who painted landscapes of appropriation, of the pride of ownership, of the taming of the wilderness, Piguenit, a city dweller, was not the owner of vast acres of land. He was, however, a native- born Tasmanian of the generation that was beginning to recognise the beauty of the wild landscapes of his homeland. As Haynes notes, ‘Piguenit’s large canvases … had a great impact on his contemporaries, allowing them to see and reappraise the notion of the ‘other’ [Western] half of the State … His paintings reclaimed these western regions from their history of infamy, and endowed them with the status of the Romantic sublime’.467

Looking at the heart

Whereas Thomas Cole’s landscape The Oxbow (Figure 62), discussed previously, leads the viewer’s eye from the wilderness in the foreground to the signs of progress in the settled landscape in the background, Piguenit paints his track and figures—now alien intruders—heading into the wilderness, away from civilisation and settlement (Figure 102). Johannes and Brown point out, ‘Piguenit's wish to show nature inspired also led to his early adoption of a series of compositional schemes based on colonial Australian and nineteenth

465 The Picturesque Atlas of Australasia (Sydney: The Picturesque Atlas Publishing Co., 1886–1888). 466 Jonathan Holmes, "In Black and White: W.C. Piguenit's Monochrome Paintings and the Imaging of the Tasmanian Wilderness in the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia," Kanunnah: Research Journal of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery 3 (2008), p.2. 467 Roslynn Haynes, "Inscribing Culture on the Landscape," Imaging Nature: media, environment and tourism, eds. L. Lester and C. Ellis (Cradle Mountain, Tasmania: University of Tasmania, 2005), unpaginated conference paper. 179 century British landscape conventions which allowed him to combine observed reality with exaggerated or invented landscape features so successfully that, to his contemporaries, his scenes appeared both absolutely true to nature and grand’. 468 Indeed, it is this compositional theme that is the main element of nearly all Piguenit’s landscapes—the leading of the viewer’s gaze towards the centre of the painting, often an imposing mountain, unlike John Glover’s Patterdale, Van Diemen’s Land (Figure 86), which pulls the viewer’s gaze to the centre of the landscape in the foreground. The background of Glover’s painting is an undifferentiated blur, still too alien to be the focus of attention.

In contrast to Manifest Destiny pioneer landscapes of the United States of America, such as Albert Bierstadt’s The Oregon Trail, in which the use of the strong diagonal

Figure 103: The line to lead the viewer’s gaze from right to left, that is, Oregon Trail, Albert showing the march of progress from civilisation into the Bierstadt 1869. unknown wilderness toward the west of the United States (Figure 103), Piquenit’s wilderness landscape painting The Frenchman’s Cap469 (Figure 101), leads the viewer’s eye toward the centre of the painting.470 Piguenit’s landscape is introverted, looking in on itself, towards its centre. It is the landscape of an artist embracing the core of his homeland, now comfortable with, indeed celebrating its wild heart. It shows not the triumphant march of the conquering multitude of settlers, but the lonely arduous trek towards self-knowledge.

468 Christa E. Johannes and Anthony V. Brown, W. C. Piguenit Retrospective (Hobart: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 1992), p.9. 469 This painting was completed as a monochrome. Jonathan Holmes asserts Piguenit’s series of seventeen monochromatic paintings were completed around 1887 for publication in the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia; that they were monochromatic as they were intended to be photographed and the image then transferred onto photo-sensitised woodblocks for engraving. Jonathan Holmes, "In Black and White: W.C. Piguenit's Monochrome Paintings and the Imaging of the Tasmanian Wilderness in the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia," Kanunnah: Research Journal of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery 3 (2008). 470 Roger Cushing Aikin, "Paintings of the Manifest Destiny: Mapping the Nation," American Art 14.3 (2000). 180

In using the Tasmanian wilderness, and not pastoral scenes, as the key element of his landscape paintings, Piguenit displayed a new way of viewing this wild space. He began to make the wilderness place. It was no longer to be feared, its wildness was now embraced as a signifier of belonging to Tasmania. His Tasmania was different to the civilised, tamed, cultivated lands of the imperial ruler; it was new, it was wild, untamed—and that wildness was now to be embraced as defining his homeland. He wanted to explore its natural beauty and paint it for all to see. To native-born Tasmanians like Piguenit, wilderness and ‘aesthetic appreciation of landscape played an important part in the evolution of island patriotism’,471 and the popularity of his paintings reflected this.

In 1891 Piguenit voiced the changing view of the Tasmanian/Australian landscape in a lecture for the Annual Banquet of the Art Society of New South Wales when he points out that Australians had only a few years earlier:

... been told that our birds were without song, our flowers without perfume, and the Australian landscape was a landscape of unbroken and unrelieved monotony. But we lived in different times now and different ideas prevailed, so that we were now told that there were beauties in our valleys and forests and mountains, and plants which were well worthy of the highest efforts of the artist's brush and of the poet's song.472

While he continued to paint Tasmanian landscapes for the rest of his life, Piguenit moved to Sydney in 1880, to continue a career as a full-time artist, something he was unable to do in Tasmania due to the limited opportunities available there. In 1898 at the age of sixty-two, Piguenit journeyed to England, taking a number of paintings with him. He lived and painted mainly around the London area. He remained in England for some months, returning to Sydney in December of that year. He returned to England the following year, this time also venturing to Wales, before returning to Australia again. He continued painting until his death in 1914.

471 Henry Reynolds, "Australian Nationalism: Tasmanian Patriotism," New Zealand Journal of History 5–6 (1982), p.23. 472 "The Art Society: The Annual Banquet." Sydney Morning Herald, 7 September, 1891, p.8. 181

Being Tasmanian

In the latter half of the 1800s Tasmania had gained responsible government and with this grew a new sense of belonging. Sentiment in the colonies was changing and the concept of an Australian nation was brewing.

Growing impatient with the lack of knowledge of the Australian colonies in Europe, with a growing sense of isolation from their colonial rulers at the time the authors of the 1886–88 Picturesque Atlas of Australasia wrote:

On the continent we are regarded as the sleeping partner of Great Britain; we are looked upon as that little ‘Co’. whose name need not be mentioned and whose number need not be counted … We are now in full motion as a nation, and our future career is pregnant with hope. Within the next century Australasia will have taken her place amongst the great nations of the earth …473

William Piguenit moved to Sydney to pursue a full-time career in art, but maintained his love of Tasmania and its wilderness. He continued to visit the island throughout the rest of his life. He wrote in 1888:

I can conscientiously say, that in all my endeavour to win honour in the world of Art I have never forgotten the ‘tight little Island’ that I am proud to call my native land [my emphasis], and trust that in days to come—if life and health are granted me—with God’s help to do something still more worthy of her’.474

William Archer also wrote of the shift of his loyalty in a series of letters to William and JD Hooker when he wrote:

20 February 1862, To Sir William, ... I regretted very much, my dear Sir William, that I was unable to advance the objects that Bentham had in view as regards the Flora

473 Ure Smith, Picturesque Atlas of Australasia: Facsimile Ed., Cover Title: Australia: The First Hundred Years, Being a Fascimilie of Volumes I & Ii of the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia, 1888. Originally Published in 3 V.: Sydney, Picturesque Atlas Publishing Co., 1886–88 (Sydney: 1974), Introduction. 474 Letter dated 12 April 1888 to , “A.J. Clark Papers”, University of Tasmania Archives, Hobart, cited in Christa E. Johannes and Anthony V. Brown, W. C. Piguenit Retrospective (Hobart: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 1992), p.40. 182

of Australia generally. I found that, though I believe Bentham, or Dr Hooker, is the fittest man to work out the whole subject of Australian Botany, I could not bring myself to ignore Mueller on his own grounds, and as a brother Australian [my emphasis], now that I am here.475

And later:

March 1865 To Sir William, ... now, as a Tasmanian [my emphasis], I ought at once to proclaim war with you for stating that we have no Botanical Garden in Tasmania! Why, we have taken the lead among the Australian Colonies in this respect ... 476

In September Archer wrote to JD Hooker of a letter he received from the botanist Ferdinand von Mueller.477 In the letter von Mueller also spoke of the growing distinction between Australian and British sentiment in the colony and

475 William Archer, Letters to W and Jd Hooker DC 75 1–6. 476 William Archer, Letters to W and Jd Hooker DC 75 1–6. 477 Sir Ferdinand Jakob Heinrich von Mueller (1825–1896), botanist, was born Mecklenburg- Schwerin. He arrived in Adelaide in 1847. In 1852 Mueller went to Melbourne where Lieutenant-Governor Charles La Trobe appointed him government botanist in 1853. In August 1857 he was appointed director of the Botanical Gardens while still retaining his post as government botanist from which he had been given unpaid leave. He immediately arranged for the development of an herbarium, contributed his own already extensive collection and began work on his Fragmenta Phytographiae Australiae which was published in twelve parts in 1858–82. As director of the gardens Mueller was responsible for exchanging seeds and plants with botanists throughout Australia as well as European and American herbaria. The need for a comprehensive systematic survey of the botanical resources of Australia had long been recognized. Hooker and his son Joseph were convinced that the work could not be attempted without reference to the notes and specimens in the collections of Banks, Brown, Cunningham and others in Europe. As early as 1856 the Hookers had urged Mueller to return so that he could combine his wide field experience with the resources of these collections to produce a work on Australian flora, but Mueller insisted that the work be undertaken and completed in Australia. He had long hoped to write a flora of Australia and had compiled much material towards it, but with extreme reluctance he agreed to step down in favour of whom he was to assist. Deirdre Morris, Mueller, Sir Ferdinand Jakob Heinrich Von (1825–1896), Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, Available: http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mueller-sir-ferdinand-jakob- heinrich-von-4266/text6893, 2 November 2011. 183 the need for Australian botanists to claim their priority in the classification of Australian plants.

7 September 1869 To Joseph Dalton Hooker, ... I heard from Mueller the other day. He wanted some novelties from us to publish with some that he has obtained, when he gets Gunn's duplicates, won't he astonish 'J. Hook', and all the wrongheaded English botanists who have meddled with Australian botany.478

And finally

23 April 1861 To Joseph Dalton Hooker, ... with reference to Bentham's proposed work on the Australian Flora nothing would please me more than to see it undertaken by one so thoroughly competent to perfect it, but you will readily understand that my present position as a resident Australian [my emphasis], and correspondent of Mueller, makes it far from easy to reconcile him to the propriety of any supporting a proposition which would deprive him of the gratification and honour of working out the Flora of his adopted country—I feel bound to recognise his major claims to consideration in the matter.479

The letters of both William Archer and William Piguenit above now emphasize their identity as Tasmanians and their growing independence from the former metropolitan centre. Archer, in particular, is beginning to question the right of the metropolis to control the publication of scientific information of the Australian colonies. As colonial botanists such as Archer gained expertise and saw themselves as more than mere collectors they altered the relationship between the metropolis and the provincial. As Jim Endersby points out:

The seemingly mundane business of picking and pressing flowers proves to be a way of constructing imperial relationships: when a collector in some remote land accepted the authority of a distant metropolitan expert by following his guidance as to what and how

478 William Archer, Letters to W and Jd Hooker DC 172 212–213. 479 William Archer, Letters to W and Jd Hooker DC 218 32–55. 184

to collect, he or she was simultaneously accepting a subordinant role and thus a colonized status.480

As their expertise and experience grew, the colonial collectors also began to appreciate that the metropolitan scientists with whom they corresponded relied on the specimens sent to them to gain knowledge.

This realization could make collectors more demanding in their dealings with the metropolis, forcing a renegotiation of relations between those at the centre and those on the imperial periphery’.481

It was not only the growing expertise of the colonial collectors that made them question their relations with the centre, but their growing sense of belonging to the imperial periphery caused them to begin to question that relationship. After all, if their loyalty was solely to the imperial centre, then its right to their knowledge would be unquestionable. The metropolitan and the colonial scientists had fundamentally differing views; the metropolitans like Hooker looked globally as the periphery had no personal attachment for them, the colonials such as Archer looked locally because of their sense of belonging to place.

Review

As the Tasmanian-born children of the first colonists began to reach adulthood in the mid-1800s, their sense of belonging to the island colony began to develop. This was the first generation to be born in, and grow up in, the colony. They had no other place that was familiar to them personally. They were beginning—like the colony itself—to gain their own separate identity; to want independence from their faraway imperial rulers. Their allegiance was to their birthplace.

480 Jim Endersby, Imperial Nature: Joseph Hooker and the Practices of Victorian Science (London: The University of Chicago Press, 2008), p.55. 481 Jim Endersby, Imperial Nature: Joseph Hooker and the Practices of Victorian Science (London: The University of Chicago Press, 2008), p.55. 185

This growing sense of independence, of identifying with their homeland, was reflected in the art of the native-born Tasmanians. William Piguenit turned to the wilderness, rather than the tamed pastures of his homeland, for inspiration. To this Tasmanian-born artist, the wilderness was no longer an alien space to be feared, but, rather a wild place to be celebrated. William Archer showed this independence, and the shift of loyalties, when he took his art from the periphery to the centre, no longer determining the metropolitan centre to have the right to be the sole holder of knowledge of the periphery.

When Archer added the notes to his botanical illustrations and named the location the specimens were to be found, he had changed their status from alien specimens collected in an unknown space to familiar specimens found in a particular place. A place he could identify with and a place to which he belonged. He had moved his centre away from the metropole to the colonial. He had become a Tasmanian.

186

Chapter Seven Canadian and New Caledonian Case Studies

In this thesis, I discuss the important position natural history art collections have to the sense of belonging of the settler society that is Tasmania today. Is this role unique to Tasmania, or does natural history art play the same role in the collections of other settler societies and former colonies? I will analyse the collections held in the public institutions of two places, New Caledonia and Canada, to determine the role played by natural history art in their collections as they both have strong links to the theme of my research, and also to Tasmania, but for very differing reasons.

New Caledonia has similarities in its experience of early European exploration. A number of British and French expeditions that sailed to Tasmania in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries also visited New Caledonia. We therefore have the same scientists and natural history artists working in both places at about the same time. There are also some colonial similarities—both being penal colonies at some stage in their early history—one British and the other French. Interestingly, New Caledonia and Tasmania were also once both part of the same supercontinent, Gondwana. This, and their island isolation, has led to their having a unique natural history with an extraordinary number of species endemic on each island. However, their differences are most interesting for my research.

Although the initial European exploration and settlement in Canada occurred at a much earlier period than that of Tasmania and New Caledonia, there were, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a number of protagonists who had a role in the natural history of both places. There is also an English and French connection in their early exploration history. Today, Canadians as a settler society grapple with the same challenging questions regarding belonging and identity in a postcolonial era as do Tasmanians. Do they search for identity in art in the same type of images?

187

Canada—European exploration and settlement—a short history

The history of Canada and Quebec is in reality many histories ... It is the history of nations—of the Aboriginal nations, who inhabited this continent before the coming of the Europeans, of the British and the French, the Americans, and, eventually, the Canadians, in their English and French speaking varieties.482

The European history of what is now Canada began in the late fifteenth century when, in March 1496, King Henry VII granted John Cabot (c1450–c1499) a patent to sail from Bristol in search of ‘lands unknown to Christians’.483 The Italian born Cabot (Zuan Cabota) had travelled to England with his sons in search of such an opportunity. It was not until June the following year that Cabot finally sighted land in North America and went ashore, claiming the land for Henry VII.484 In late 1523, another Italian, Giovanni de Verrozzano (1485–1528) sailing for the French king Francis I, sighted the northern Americas. Verrozzino, impressed by the vast new lands he saw sailed further north, naming these lands New France.485

By the early sixteenth century both the English and French were showing intense interest in this new-found land, sending further expeditions of exploration; in 1527 the British expedition commanded by John Rut (fl. 1512– 1528) sailed from England, on the first of three voyages, returning in 1534 and again in 1535–36. The French sent Jacques Cartier (1491–1557) to explore the northern continent.486 On the expeditions they were not only looking at new territory, they were also in search of a north-west passage to the lucrative spice trade in the East.

482 Robert Bothwell, Canada and Quebec: One Country, Two Histories (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1998), p.3. 483 Ronald H. Fritze, New Worlds: The Great Voyages of Discovery, 1400–1600 (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2002), p.121. 484 Ronald H. Fritze, New Worlds: The Great Voyages of Discovery, 1400–1600 (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2002), p.125. 485 Ronald H. Fritze, New Worlds: The Great Voyages of Discovery, 1400–1600 (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2002), pp.172–73. 486 Ronald H. Fritze, New Worlds: The Great Voyages of Discovery, 1400–1600 (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2002), pp.173–75. 188

European interest moved toward the settlement of the lands of North America. The French were interested in the fur trade, for beaver and other animals that overhunting had brought close to extinction in Europe, while the British were beginning to search for an imagined new Arcadia, away from the growing overcrowded, dirty cities of the industrial era. By the seventeenth century settlers began to arrive, and, as Bothwell notes, ‘the [native] peoples of North America were no match for the European settlers and soldiers who arrived in North America in the seventeenth century— English to the south, in what is now the United States, and French to the north, in what is now Canada’.487 Historian Jim Miller asserts, ‘The European, having arrived, simply assumed that they, rather than the Aboriginal inhabitants who preceded them, owned the land’.488

With both the British and French laying claim to lands in North America, there was soon conflict and battles for possession of the new lands resulted. Britain issued The Royal Proclamation of 1763, after the conquest of Canada and its transfer to British rule.489 However, a growing movement towards independence from the British rulers was soon evident, in both English and French speaking parts of the colony. As would happen later in Australia, settlers in the Canadian provinces sought responsible government and a loosening of ties with the imperial rulers in Britain. In 1792, held the first freely elected , and in 1867 confederation created the of Canada.490

487 Robert Bothwell, Canada and Quebec: One Country, Two Histories (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1998), p.8. 488 Cited in Robert Bothwell, Canada and Quebec: One Country, Two Histories (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1998), p.8. 489 Robert Bothwell, Canada and Quebec: One Country, Two Histories (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1998), p.9. 490 Important dates in Canadian history: 1763 France cedes its colonies in North America after the Seven Years' War. 1791 Constitutional Act establishes provinces of and Lower Canada 1792 First elected legislature in Lower Canada 1840s Gradual achievement of local autonomy in the British North American provinces 1867 Confederation creates the Dominion of Canada 189

Natural history – Canada

Canada, like Tasmania, is a settler society with many of the same conflicts regarding belonging and identity in this postcolonial era. In addition, their histories are related; a number of protagonists have links to Canada and Australia (and therefore, of course, to Tasmania). Captain James Cook visited both places, as did Sir Joseph Banks. While Sydney Parkinson did not visit Canada, he did illustrate specimens from Sir Joseph Banks’ visit to Labrador before joining Banks and Cook on the voyage to Australia. sailed to both Canada and Tasmania. Moreover, of course, it should not be forgotten that Sir John Franklin, Lieutenant Governor of Tasmania—who played such a vital role in the advancement of interest in natural history in the colony—had made his name as a polar explorer in Canada before his posting to Tasmania. He later tragically lost his life on another expedition to Canada. The ties that link these people in the histories of both places occurred in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Unlike the early natural history illustrations of the Tasmanian and New Caledonian fauna and flora, made during the second scientific revolution of the age of wonder of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the first European illustrations of Canadian wildlife were from an earlier, less scientifically rigorous era of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As Bernard Smith notes, ‘… the Pacific [and therefore Tasmania] although the last great ocean to be explored by Europeans, was, curiously enough, the first large region beyond Europe that modern scientific method came fully to grips with’.491 As a result, early natural history illustration of Canada and northern

1931 Statute of Westminster – A statute of parliament made in Britain on 3 December 1931 which gave significant equality to a number of within the British Empire. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and could now be considered sovereign nations with full control of both domestic and foreign affairs, but with an allegiance to the British Crown. 1982 Canada Act, all legal dependence on the British parliament cut. 491 Bernard William Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific, 2nd ed ed. (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1989), p.2. 190

America, contained images more evocative of the bestiaries produced in Europe at the time.

One of the earliest publications devoted to Canadian natural history was Codex canadiensis, published by the Jesuit missionary Louis Nicolas in 1676.492 In their recent article on Codex canadiensis, Reeves, Gagon and Houston describe the manuscript thus, ‘[it] consists of 79 leaves with 180 illustrations of plants, birds, mammals, fishes, and a few fabulous animals. This manuscript arguably is the most obscure and enigmatic surviving document pertaining to the early natural history of French Canada’.493 Of particular note, here, is the inclusion of a few fabulous animals.

Reeves et al. give a detailed analysis of Louis Nicholas’ illustrations within the volume:

In the codex, some North American taxa appear to have been illustrated or named for the first time … however, Nicolas appears to have made free use of Conrad Gessner’s (1560) work. Sources for the fish illustrations seem to have been more varied, Figure 104: Unicorn including Belon (1555), Rondelet (1558), Gessner in Codex canadiensis. and Aldrovandi (1599–1603) ... Interestingly, little

evidence of borrowing is apparent in the codex’s botanical drawings, the one exception being the ‘passion flower’.494

492 For more on Codex canadiensis see Henry M. Reeves, François-Marc Gagon and C. Stuart Houston, ""Codex Canadiensis", an Early Illustrated Manuscript of Canadian Natural History," Archives of Natural History 31.(1) (2004). 493 Henry M. Reeves, François-Marc Gagon and C. Stuart Houston, ""Codex Canadiensis", an Early Illustrated Manuscript of Canadian Natural History," Archives of Natural History 31.(1) (2004), p.150. 494 Henry M. Reeves, François-Marc Gagon and C. Stuart Houston, ""Codex Canadiensis", an Early Illustrated Manuscript of Canadian Natural History," Archives of Natural History 31.(1) (2004), p.161. 191

Unlike the lands of the southern oceans, with their unique and bizarre wildlife so new to European science, the fauna and flora of northern America held many similarities to that of parts of Europe. As such, as is evident in the Codex, early publications could, and did, include images previously published in books on the European fauna and flora. An obvious copy from Gessner of a fabulous animal is the image of a unicorn (Figure 104) in the Codex. Louis Nicolas claims to have seen the creature. It seems more likely that, as so many of the animals he saw around him were familiar from Europe, and were illustrated in such authoritative volumes as those by Gessner, Aldrovandi and others,

Nicholas imagined all creatures illustrated there could and should also be found in Canada. He was, after all, in the wilderness of a heathen country—who knew what manner of fabulous beasts lurked there.

While Nicolas’s illustration of the unicorn was fanciful,

the images of the elk and beaver (Figure 105) he included, also copied from Gessner, are elements of the Canadian fauna. The fauna and flora of North America resembled closely the known European natural history and fit neatly into the Natural Order of classification of and Pliny. As Reeves et al note:

Nicolas occasionally deviates from his aim of depicting native wildlife of New France by Figure 105: Codex interjecting exotic species and domesticated animals. canadiensis. As was typical of his time, Nicolas sometimes lapsed into hearsay reports of fabulous creatures and imaginary beasts.495

495 Henry M. Reeves, François-Marc Gagon and C. Stuart Houston, ""Codex Canadiensis", an Early Illustrated Manuscript of Canadian Natural History," Archives of Natural History 31.(1) (2004), p.161. 192

Nicolas was a missionary to Canada, not a migrant wanting to settle and make this new land his home, as such, although he had an interest in the wildlife around him, he did not illustrate his Codex with fresh drawings made with wonder at the creatures that surrounded him. He copied what was familiar to him with images from a place that was familiar to him. Later, as interest in natural history moved from the curiosity cabinet to the scientific study of species, the illustration of Canada’s fauna and flora also moved from the crude, borrowed, imagined and fanciful images of the Codex, toward the descriptive illustration similar to the images of Tasmanian fauna and flora of the golden age of scientific illustration of the nineteenth century.

As in Tasmania, a number of the public institutions of Canada hold collections devoted to natural history and natural history illustration. The Fisher Rare Books Library at the University of Toronto has a particularly wonderful range of natural history art collections. They include a large number of prints and volumes devoted to the ornithological history of Northern America, based on the collections of James Henry Fleming (1872–1940) and James L. Baillie (1904–1970),496 as well as the exquisite botanical drawings of Agnes Chamberlin (1833–1913). While there are excellent collections of natural history art in major public institutions throughout Canada, they do not fulfil the same role in the ‘sense of belonging’ that they do in Tasmanian institutions.

With the majority of Canadian natural history also found in the United States of America and in Europe, it cannot play the role it does in countries like New

496 J.H. Fleming, amassed an immense collection of over 32,000 bird specimens and a library of 2214 books and 10,000 periodical volumes and pamphlets. On his death in 1940, most of his specimens and his books went to the Royal Ontario Museum and formed the nucleus of its great ornithology collection. Over the years a certain number of the rare books were transferred to the University of Toronto's Rare Book Library at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library. Jim Baillie–born in Toronto–in the early 1920s was appointed registrar in the Ornithology Department of the ROM, later becoming Assistant Curator of Ornithology. The Baillie book collection at the Fisher Rare Book Library contains over nine hundred volumes. The works of all Canada's early ornithologists are represented, often in all their various editions. Joan Winearls, "'Art on the Wing': A Tale of Two Collectors, Four Libraries," The Halcyon.22 (1998). 193

Zealand and Australia, and an island state like Tasmania, with the extent of endemism of their fauna and flora. It is their unique landscape that Canadians turn to in their search for belonging and identity. It is in what is different, or unique, to place that we look to when attempting to determine our centre. It is, of course, also true that landscape painting plays an important role in identity in Australian art, especially in Tasmania. However, it is my argument that the illustration of Tasmania’s unique fauna and flora has a great significance in the sense of belonging there that it does not, and cannot, have in Canada where the wildlife is not unique to that country.

The natural history art of Canadian fauna and flora

Like the first natural history art of Tasmania, British and French artists made the earliest illustrations of the Canadian fauna and flora, but as settlers arrived, they began to paint the plants and animals of the new colony. The scientific revolution of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries led to new classification of Canadian species and to more accurate representations of the zoology and botany.

Amongst the first to illustrate Canadian birds in this time was Eleazer Albin (fl. 1690–1759). An English illustrator, he produced A Natural History of Birds497 engraved and published in parts between 1731 and 1738, and made up of 306 plates. The book contains

Figure 106: The illustrations of Canadian birds, for example, the etching Great Speckled Loon of the Great Speckled Loon from (Figure from New Foundland, Eleazer 106). Eleazer Albin first produced watercolours that he Albin. engraved and hand coloured with the help of his

497 Eleazar Albin, A Natural History of Birds: Illustrated with Two Hundred and Five Copper Plates, Curiously Engraven from the Life (London: Royal Society, 1738). 194 daughter Elizabeth. Albin’s original watercolours, on which he based his etchings, are in Marsh’s Library, in Dublin Ireland.498 Albin’s Natural History of Birds is important for a number of reasons; it was the first British work of ornithology to feature hand-coloured plates. However, more interestingly for this thesis, Albin did not visit Canada to view the birds in their natural habitat, although he claims to have drawn the images from life. Instead, as Julie Gardham notes:

Albin's specimens came from a variety of sources. His penchant for cultivating connections with the aristocracy provided him with access to the large collections of exotic birds owned by the Duke of Chandos, Thomas Lowther, and the naturalist Joseph Dandridge ... although accurate, his illustrations have been criticised for being stiff and lifeless’.499

The fact that Albin’s illustrations are ‘stiff and lifeless’, and have no jizz, as is evident from the drawing of the Great Speckled Loon above, would seem to indicate that they almost certainly were drawn from skins or stuffed specimens, and not from living specimens.

This illustration of the skins or of captive birds by an artist who had never seen the animals in their natural habitat harkens back to my argument regarding the context of artworks created in this manner when discussing the Tasmanian plants illustrated by the likes of Jean-Pierre Redouté. A change in the context, similar to that seen in Tasmanian art can be detected when artists start painting the fauna and flora in situ.

498 Library and Archives of Canada, Peter Winkworth Collection, Available: http://collectionscanada.ge.co, 1 August 2011. 499 Julie Gardham, Birds, Bees and Blooms: A Selection of Natural History Books from Special Collections 2007, University of Glasgow, Available: http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/ecology/. 195

While Tasmania had the greatest ornithological artists of the era painting for John Gould’s Birds of Australia, Canada had arguably the greatest bird illustrator of all in John James Audubon (1785–1851) paint some of the

native birds of the country. Among his illustrations of Canadian birds are the Canada Goose, the Great Blue Heron and the Spotted or Canada Grouse (Figure 107). Born in Haiti, the illegitimate son of a French plantation owner, Jean Jacques Audubon moved to France as a child, and later, in 1803, to the United States of America. According to the Audubon Society:

Audubon set off on his epic quest to depict America’s avifauna … In 1826 he sailed with his partly finished collection to England. His life-size, Figure 107: highly dramatic bird portraits, along with his Canadian birds, JJ embellished descriptions of wilderness life, hit just Audubon. the right note at the height of the Continent’s Romantic era. [In England] Audubon found a printer for his Birds of America.500

Audubon, like the Tasmanian artist William Archer who also took his illustrations of orchids to England to

Figure 108: Audubon publish, was self-taught in both drawing and science, sketch of Audubon's which makes his detailed studies all the more shearwater 1826. remarkable. In describing Audubon’s paintings Joseph Kastner asserts:

From the start, his drawings had the virtue of being true to nature since he painted from sketches (Figure 108) made in the field and from birds he had shot and taken home.501

500 John James Audubon, 2011, National Audubon Society, Available: http://www.audubon.org/john-james-audubon. John James Audubon, : From Drawings Made in the United States, and Their Territories (New York: John Audubon, 1844). 501 Joseph Kastner, John James Audubon, First Impressions, ed. Robert Morton (New York: Harry N Abrams Inc, 1992), p.34. 196

Joseph Kastner describes Audubon’s drawing technique, ‘Painstaking hours went into getting the right shades of colour in a tail feather or the exact number of scales on a bird’s tiny claw. He was quick enough to sketch a bird in flight and patient enough to fill in every detail when he turned his sketches into elaborate paintings’.502 This a degree of detail that can only be achieved by an artist with an intimate knowledge of, and access to, the birds he is illustrating. Audubon even used the birds themselves to ensure accuracy in his life-size works, as Kastner notes, ‘After shooting a bird and cleaning it, he would wire it into a position he had chosen, and then pin it against a large sheet of graph paper so he could get everything in scale. Compasses and callipers helped make his measurements accurate’.503 This detailed description of Audubon’s art-making gives an insight into the rigorous accuracy that was now required of the scientific illustrator of the nineteenth century, a combination of the jizz drawings of animals in their natural habitat and taxonomically precise detail.

While Audubon’s ornithological illustrations are acknowledged as the world’s greatest and are held in collections in Canada’s cultural institutions, they cannot, and do not, document a connection to place in the manner natural history art does in Tasmania. Although Audubon did paint the Canada Gosse and other Canadian birds, the majority of the birds he painted can be found in other parts of North America. His ornithological paintings cannot be identified as ‘belonging to place’, as belonging to Canada.

Of course, it was not only birds that were the target for the natural history artist in Canada.

The flora of Canada, like that of Tasmania, was often illustrated by women artists. At about the same time that Mary Morton Allport and Louisa Anne Meredith came to Tasmania, Canada was already boasting women who were native-born natural history artists. Maria Morris (1810–1875) born in Country

502 Joseph Kastner, John James Audubon, First Impressions, ed. Robert Morton (New York: Harry N Abrams Inc, 1992), p.42. 503 Joseph Kastner, John James Audubon, First Impressions, ed. Robert Morton (New York: Harry N Abrams Inc, 1992), p.42. 197

Harbour, Nova Scotia, but grew up in Halifax. She studied art with her mother who had opened a school there. She would eventually become head of the School of Drawing and Painting at the school. In 1832, she studied botanical art with the visiting English painter

L'Estrange, and in 1836, the North British Society of Figure 109: Indian cup, Sarracenia Halifax called her ‘Painter of the Year’.504 Maria Morris purpurea, by had begun to produce exquisite watercolour paintings of Maria Morris. the native flora of the province for Titus Smith, the first Secretary of Agriculture for Nova Scotia as her scientific advisor.505

The illustration of the Indian cup Sarracenia purpurea (Figure 109) shows Maria Morris’s skill, not only as an artist, but more importantly, as a scientific illustrator. She presented a single specimen on a blank background, the style favoured by scientific illustrators. Dianne O’Neill asserts, ‘by titling these early drawings with their botanical names, [and having scientists assist her by adding descriptions of the specimens] Morris has indicated that her drawings should be both scientifically accurate and decorative, though the scientific resources available to her in Halifax would have been limited’.506

In the previous chapter, I have linked the painting of natural history specimens by native-born members of a settler society to a growing sense of belonging to place within that society. In her essay accompanying the 2010 exhibition Maria Morris: A Nova Scotian Garland Dianne O’Neill posits, ‘The production of these four sets of lithographs, documenting twenty-two native plants, straddles the period between the ‘intellectual awakening’ and

504 Dianne O’Neill, Maria Morris Miller, 2009, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Available: http://www.artgalleryofnovascotia.ca/en/AGNS_Halifax/about_us/collection/permanentcoll ection/artists/mariamorris/default.aspx. 505 Dianne O’Neill, Maria Morris Miller, 2009, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Available: http://www.artgalleryofnovascotia.ca/en/AGNS_Halifax/about_us/collection/permanentcoll ection/artists/mariamorris/default.aspx. 506 Dianne O’Neill, Maria Morris Miller, 2009, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Available: http://www.artgalleryofnovascotia.ca/en/AGNS_Halifax/about_us/collection/permanentcoll ection/artists/mariamorris/default.aspx. 198

Confederation in Nova Scotia, a period marked by patriotic fervour and utopian dreams. Maria Morris's effort to record the diverse flora of her native land is in accord with the patriotism of the era; her scientific and artistic attempt, with the utopian pursuit’.507 So, where the botanical illustrations of William Archer can be seen a sign of the growing sense of belonging to place in Tasmania, the illustrations of Maria Morris in Nova Scotia (Figure 110), are noted for their patriotic fervour—to national identity—and not to a sense of belonging to place. A small distinction, but I believe, a telling one.

Maria Morris and William Archer were creating their botanical drawings at the time, there was a great difference in the political environment in which they worked. While Maria Morris produced her illustrations between 1830 and 1870, Canada gradually achieved local autonomy and confederation created the Dominion of Canada in 1867. An exciting time, a time when a new nation was born. William Archer, on the other hand, began working while Tasmania was still under martial law, with no political freedoms; he was a member of the first, freely elected Parliament, and instrumental in stopping the transportation of convicts to the colony, and changing Van Diemen’s Land to Tasmania. He worked at a time when the first children born in the colony were reaching adulthood, growing up with no memory of another home, beginning to form an allegiance to their homeland. There was, as yet, no ‘patriotic fervour’; Australia did not become a Federation until 1901, nearly thirty years after his death in 1874.

Figure 110: Illustrations by Maria Morris.

507 Dianne O’Neill, Maria Morris Miller, 2009, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Available: http://www.artgalleryofnovascotia.ca/en/AGNS_Halifax/about_us/collection/permanentcoll ection/artists/mariamorris/default.aspx. 199

Another woman botanical illustrator, working in Toronto in the mid-1800s, was Agnes Chamberlin (1833–1913). The Chamberlin Collection at the Fisher Library, University of Toronto consists of well over 200 original watercolour paintings of Canadian flora and mushrooms dating from the period 1863 to the 1900s.

Figure 111: Canadian Wildflowers, Agnes In addition to the ten watercolours first published in Chamberlin. Canadian Wild Flowers in 1868 (Figure 111), nine more paintings were reproduced as illustrations for Catherine Parr Traill's work, Studies of Plant Life in Canada,508 published in 1885. Twelve additional paintings were reproduced in black and white for the second edition of Studies of Plant Life published in 1906.509 Before being digitized for the Library website most of the original

paintings had not previously been reproduced (Figure 112). Agnes Chamberlin, like Louisa Anne Meredith, found she needed to produce her own work. As noted on the Fisher Library website:

She then set to … and hand-coloured the whole edition as well [as lithographing the illustrations]. The resulting book, Canadian Wild Flowers, is a

landmark in Canadian printing—the first lavish Figure 112: Aster lindleyanis (top), ‘coffee table’ book with coloured illustrations to be 510 Amanita, Boletus, printed and published entirely in Canada. Stropharia semiglobata (bottom). It is a testament to the public interest in natural history art that was this type of art practice, and not landscape art, that was produced in this manner. Like Maria Morris in Nova Scotia, Agnes Chamberlin was interested in the scientific accuracy of her illustrations

508 Agnes Chamberlin, Canadian Wildflowers (Montreal: J. Lovell, 1868), Agnes Chamberlin, Studies of Plant Life in Canada (Ottawa: A.S. Woodburn, 1885). 509 Agnes Chamberlain Digital Collection, 2008, University of Toronto, Available: http://chamberlin.library.utoronto.ca/agnes.cfm. 510 Agnes Chamberlain Digital Collection, 2008, University of Toronto, Available: http://chamberlin.library.utoronto.ca/agnes.cfm. 200 and in insuring that the native wildflowers she saw around her were recorded. Unlike Mary Morton Allport and Louisa Anne Meredith in Tasmania, she was not painting new, unknown species to help her assimilate to a new environment, but she was ensuring that images of the plants she knew and saw as distinctly Canadian were published so fellow Canadians could identify, and identify with, them.

Landscape art and identity in Canada

From the first landscapes of appropriation by the early British explorers that Crowley describes in Taken on the Spot: The Visual Appropriation of New France for the

511 Figure 113: View of Global British Landscape, wilderness and the Fall of geographical art have had significant roles in defining Montgomery and the Attack made by Canada. Peter Mellen notes, ‘the early topographers General Wolfe on were mainly interested in it as a picturesque curiosity the French Entrenchments near [my emphasis], and they painted ‘picturesque post- Beaufort. cards’’512 Here the landscape takes on the role of curiosity also played by the fauna and flora of the Antipodes.

However, no matter how appealing the visual representation, this picturesque imaging of the Canadian landscape had a political context (Figure 113). It was a way of legitimizing the appropriation of these new lands. In this painting we see the act of imperial takeover set within the landscape as Crowley notes in his caption to the image, ‘The visual record of the invasion balanced military events with picturesque landscapes’.513

Crowley goes on to assert:

Imperial landscape art linked three crucial developments in eighteenth-century British culture and politics: 1) the creation of a British identity available to peoples throughout the British Isles

511 John E. Crowley, "'Taken on the Spot': The Visual Appropriation of New France for the Global British Landscape," The Canadian Historical Review 86.1, March (2005). 512 Peter Mellen, The Group of Seven (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1970), p.2. 513 John E. Crowley, "'Taken on the Spot': The Visual Appropriation of New France for the Global British Landscape," The Canadian Historical Review 86.1, March (2005), p.13. 201

and in settler colonies, 2) the imperial assertion of this identity through commercial expansion and strategic success, and 3) the commodified representation of these identities and successes to a viewing public. 514

In the landscapes of the period, the rugged Canadian wilderness was both different and familiar, and as Crowley points out, ‘The picturesque style simultaneously created differences (topographically) and familiarity (aesthetically) among imperial spaces in ways that naturalized their appropriation as British rather than alien environments.515

In painting the Canadian environment in the picturesque style of the British landscape artists, the bonds between the new settlers and the imperial power could be maintained. However, as Mellen asserts, ‘There was little landscape painting of interest in Canada before 1850. In the eighteenth century, the topographical artists produced many views of Canada but nearly all were uninspired’.516 Was this because the artists had not yet identified with the landscape, or indeed, were not yet identifying themselves as Canadian, rather than British or French?

The end of the nineteenth century saw the growing movement to create a new, separate identity by the settlers in Canada. In Tasmania, free settlers, like John Glover, who could view the alien landscape through the eyes of belonging, of ownership, were able to paint the landscape with a new, distinctly Tasmanian approach. The growing search for a Canadian identity led landscape artists to try to develop a new unique method of painting the landscape, to look for the ‘essence’ of Canada. As Mellen points out, ‘Canada was not always seen as a wild and rugged country. The artists who painted Canada have perceived different things at different times. … The late nineteenth century artists interpreted it as a tame and civilized landscape of fields and woods, which

514 John E. Crowley, "'Taken on the Spot': The Visual Appropriation of New France for the Global British Landscape," The Canadian Historical Review 86.1, March (2005), p.6. 515 John E. Crowley, "'Taken on the Spot': The Visual Appropriation of New France for the Global British Landscape," The Canadian Historical Review 86.1, March (2005), p.6. 516 Peter Mellen, The Group of Seven (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1970), p.2. 202 approximated that of England’.517 Perhaps this is why, as Mellen claims, Canadian landscape paintings before 1850 were ‘of little interest’.

The landscapes, in their British picturesque tradition, did not suit the image of the landscape Canadians sought in their growing quest for an independent identity for their new country, for their new centre. Canadians looked for a new way of imaging their wilderness that reflected their new way of seeing the landscape. The beginning of the twentieth century saw the reappropriation of the Canadian landscape by artists.

The Group of Seven

While Tasmanians look to the nineteenth century landscape artist John Glover as the first artist to truly represent their landscape, it would not be until the early twentieth century that Canadians found their search for identity in the distinctive style of the Group of Seven. Rightly or wrongly, the art of the landscape artists known as the Group of Seven518 is perceived by many as representing identity in Canadian art. Some would argue that this Toronto- based group of artists did not truly represent Canada.519 Be that as it may, the Group of Seven are now inextricably linked with landscape art and identity in Canada today. As Emily Gilbert notes:

In Canada, wilderness has also played a central role in the national imaginary, and it has been relentlessly repackaged and remarketed for domestic and foreign consumption. The works of the Group of Seven have become stereotypical in this regard.520

Of the links between the landscape and identity in Canada, Manning writes:

517 Peter Mellen, The Group of Seven (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1970), p.2. 518 Franklin Carmichael (1890–1945), Lawren Harris (1885–1970), Alexander Jackson (1882– 1974), Franz Johnston (1888–1949), Arthur Lismer (1885–1969), James Macdonald (1873–1932), Frederick Varley (1881–1969). Thomas Thompson (1877–1917) died before the Group was officially formed, but he is strongly associated with them. 519 Peter Mellen, The Group of Seven (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1970), p.111. 520 Emily Gilbert, "Beyond Survival? Wilderness and Canadian National Identity into the Twenty-First Century," British Journal of Canadian Studies 21.1 (2009), p.65. 203

… the traditional vocabulary of landscape painting in Canada stems in large part from the work of the Group of Seven. In the landscape painting of the Group of Seven, Territory is imagined as a window into national identity, where the national is conceived on the basis of a homogenous notion of culture and belonging.521

Why did Canadian artists turn to landscape art in their search for a Canadian identity? The art of landscape painting begins and matures with the discovery and growth of Canada as a nation, in the same way that scientific illustration does in Australia. The first true landscape art in Europe is said to be that of the German artist Albrecht Altdorfer (c.1480–1538), who began painting his innovative pictures about the same time that John Cabot was sailing towards Canada.

Christopher Wood describes Altdorfer’s landscapes thus:

These pictures describe mountain ranges and cliff-

faces, skies stacked with clouds, rivers, stream- Figure 114: beds, roads, forts with turrets, church steeples, Landscape with a double spruce, bridges, and many trees, both deciduous and Albrecht Altdorfer. evergreen (Figure 114).522

The thing that distinguishes Altdorfer’s paintings is that, ‘most are entirely empty of living creatures, human and animal alike ... They are physically detached from any possible explanatory context. They are complete pictures, finished and framed, which nevertheless make a powerful impression of incompleteness and silence.’523

However, Christopher Wood also points out that the Hercynian forest of Germany in 1500s that Altdorfer painted, were seen as something uniquely

521 Erin Manning, Ephemeral Territories: Representing Nation, Home, and Identity in Canada (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), p.2. 522 Christopher S. Wood, Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape (London: Reaktion Books Ltd., 1993), p.9. 523 Christopher S. Wood, Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape (London: Reaktion Books Ltd., 1993), p.9. 204

German, something that defined the German identity, ‘For literary humanists, that forest came to stand for all that was distinctive about Germany. Wild landscape terrified and repelled foreigners. Tacitus [AD 56– AD 117] in the Germania, his monograph on the land and character of the Germans, had described ‘a farmless terrain and harsh climate, dismal to till or to behold, unless it were one’s native land’.524 Landscape has been used as defining the character and identity of a people from time immemorial. It is therefore not surprising that artists turn to the landscape when wanting to define a national identity.

Yet, it was not until Canadians became an urbanized society that the wilderness came to be used to define them. As Eva Mackey points out, ‘the half-century between confederation and the end of the First World War, Canada was transformed from a frontier nation to a Western industrial nation. Simultaneous with this ‘march of progress’ and ‘civilisation’, the very phenomena which were being destroyed were now invoked to represent Canadian nationhood ... Meanwhile the Northern wilderness would come to represent Canada, in particular through the paintings of the Group of Seven’.525 In the years after confederation, Canadians were seeking to establish an new identity, an identity different to that of their colonial past. According to Erin Manning they did this through art, ‘the Group of Seven sought to create a vision of Canada that would be a departure from their colonial roots, claiming that it was only through a relationship to the land that Canadians could become acquainted with their ‘true’ nature.526

524 Tacitus Germania, cited in Christopher S. Wood, Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape (London: Reaktion Books Ltd., 1993), p.128. 525 Eva Mackey, The House of Difference: Cultures, Politics and National Identity in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), p.40. 526 Erin Manning, Ephemeral Territories: Representing Nation, Home, and Identity in Canada (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), p.2. 205

Both Altdorfer and the Group of Seven used landscape painting as a means to characterise their surroundings (Figure 115). While Altdorfer’s painting is, as Christopher Wood notes, ‘ambiguous—are we heading into the forest or into a settlement,’527 the Group of Seven’s Tom Thompson landscape The Jack Pine is candid in its statement about being in the wilderness. There is no sign, no hint, of human intrusion. But in painting the rugged Canadian landscape, some 500 years after Altdorfer, the Group of Seven attempt to identify

Canadian identity by what is now lost in the European Figure 115: landscape—the wilderness, the lands untouched by Landscape Altdorfer (top), Thompson human intervention—though, of course, even in Canada (bottom). this pristine wilderness was by then a myth. What truly wild places that still existed were not familiar to most Canadians. It was the ideal of an untamed Canadian wilderness that the Group of Seven were painting.

New Caledonia—European exploration and settlement—a short history

New Caledonia has a shared history of European discovery and exploration with Australia and its island state, Tasmania. After leaving the east coast of Australia, Captain James Cook sailed into the Pacific to become the first European to sight New Caledonia in September 1774. The first landfall was in the Bay of Balade, on the north east coast of the Mainland, where they stayed for eight days.

In 1793, the second recorded European visit to the islands was that of D’Entrecasteaux, who sailed from Tasmania to New Caledonia. The D’Entrecasteaux expedition was to search for the lost Jean-François de Galaup La Pérouse (1741–1788) 1783 expedition. The remoteness of New Caledonia

527 Christopher S. Wood, Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape (London: Reaktion Books Ltd., 1993), p.9. 206 meant there was little European activity in the area for some time, as Martyn Lyons notes, ‘After D'Entrecasteaux, foreign visitors were few and far between. Captain Kent and the Buffalo, returning from Norfolk Island, stayed six weeks at Port St Vincent in 1803 ... The explorer Dumont d'Urville approached the Loyalty Islands in 1827, but never made a landing’.528 Dumont d’Urville did make landfall on his next expedition of 1837–1840.

Eventually New Caledonia did become of interest to the Europeans, as Martyn Lyons notes, ‘Two important events, however, were beginning to transform the development of the South Pacific. The first was the establishment of Sydney in 1788, which created a new centre of influence, wealth and commerce in the region. The second was the arrival of the first Christian missionaries on Tahiti in 1797’.529 Some fifty years later French missionaries arrived at New Caledonia. When Bishop Douarre and his missionaries arrived in 1843. They landed at Balade. On 21 January 1844, Captain Laferriere raised the French flag above the mission’.530 As the British had already claimed Australia (and Tasmania) and New Zealand, the French government was anxious to establish a permanent base in the area, and in 1853, under the rule of Napoleon III, Admiral Febvrier-Despointes officially declared that New Caledonia belonged to France. At the time, the population was estimated at 50,000 Melanesians and a few hundred Europeans. However, France soon found another use for the islands.

For a number of reasons the nineteenth century saw an influx of rural workers heading to the urban centres of France looking for work, but they found few positions available. This led to overcrowding, poverty, and crime in the metropolitan centres. The French government, like the British, found a solution to overcrowded gaols was to send prisoners overseas, first to Guyana, and then

528 Martyn Lyons, The Totem and the Tricolour: A Short History of New Caledonia since 1774 (Kensington, N.S.W.: New South Wales University Press, 1986), p.8. 529 Martyn Lyons, The Totem and the Tricolour: A Short History of New Caledonia since 1774 (Kensington, N.S.W.: New South Wales University Press, 1986), p.8. 530 Myriam Dornoy, Politics in New Caledonia (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1984), p.14. 207 to New Caledonia. New Caledonia, like Tasmania, became a penal colony. As Stephen Toth asserts, ‘colonial transportation appeared to offer a means of removing malfeasors, convicted of either felonies or repeated misdemeanours, from the corruption and degenerative forces found within cities, and to rehabilitate them in the hard work of forging the colonial empire’.531 New Caledonia was not only a penal colony, but a part of the growing French empire, and soon free settlers were encouraged to make their new homes on the islands.

From 1887, the French government pursued a programme of free colonisation in New Caledonia. With free passage, free land, and financial help, Frenchmen from the lower classes were sent to this remote Territory.532 What did these French migrants see when they arrived? Isabelle Merle notes:

We must stress this very important concept the Europeans had of New Caledonia: ‘there was nothing’. The idea refers to the virgin nature, the bush with no European references. For Europeans in New Caledonia, like Australia, the environment of these faraway countries, the very nature which surrounded them, made no sense.533

If, as Isabelle Merle suggests, these settlers found the new fauna and flora as alien as the settlers in Tasmania, did they also begin to paint them as the Tasmanian settlers did? It appears they did not. One possible explanation for this can be found in the settlers and the lands they were granted. In Tasmania, the land grants often covered large acreages for sheep and cattle properties. In New Caledonia, while some land grants were given to establish cattle properties, the grants were more commonly of only a few hectares.534 The majority of the settlers were peasants attracted to the colony in the hope of

531 Stephen A. Toth, "Colonisation or Incarceration?," The Journal of Pacific History 34.1 (1999), p.61. 532 Isabelle Merle, "The Foundation of Voh 1892–1895," The Journal of Pacific History 26.2 (1991), p.235. 533 Isabelle Merle, "The Foundation of Voh 1892–1895," The Journal of Pacific History 26.2 (1991), p.239. 534 Migrants were given 25 hectares of land, five hectares for cultivation and 20 for grazing. Isabelle Merle, "The Foundation of Voh 1892–1895," The Journal of Pacific History 26.2 (1991), p.235. 208 improving their lot. Struggling to survive on just a few hectares, they did not have the time or resources needed to illustrate the exotic wilderness in which they found themselves.

The late 1800s saw an influx not only of French migrants, but also contract workers from French Indo-China and Java.535 Most of these contract workers were employed at the newly opened mines, or as servants for the French landholders. Many stayed and eventually settled in the country, and so the emigrants soon outnumbered the indigenous Kanak population.

Today, the Kanak (Melanesian) number about forty-three percent; Europeans, mostly French approximately thirty-seven percent; Polynesians nearly eleven percent and others approximately nine percent.536 New Caledonia is not a settler society in the same manner as Australia and Canada, where the European settler population far outnumbers that of the indigenous population. Certainly, the indigenous Kanak population is in the minority but, the colonial European population does not form the majority population.

Natural history—New Caledonia

The natural history of New Caledonia is unique, with a very high proportion of species endemic to the islands (Table 2), particularly Grande Terre. Among countries, only Australia, South Africa, and Madagascar have more endemic plant families; these nations are also vastly larger than New Caledonia.537

535 Isabelle Merle, "The Foundation of Voh 1892–1895," The Journal of Pacific History 26.2 (1991), p.242. 536 Myriam Dornoy, Politics in New Caledonia (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1984), p.2. 537 Conservation International, Biodiversity Hotspots, 2011, Available: http://www.biodiversityhotspots.org/xp/Hotspots/new_caledonia/pages/biodiversity.aspx, 17 July 2011. Plants: Endemism is especially high among vascular plants. There are about 3,270 plant species recorded on the islands, 74 percent of which are endemic (roughly 2,430 species). Birds: Out of more than 100 birds found in New Caledonia, more than 20 are endemic. 209

There are ancient links between Australia/Tasmania and New Caledonia. From a botanical and zoological point of view, both were once part of Gondwana. This is particularly important in relation to Grande Terre, the Figure 116: Rivière main island of New Caledonia, for it is unlike any other Bleue Park on the Mainland. island in the area. It is more closely related in its terrain to New Zealand and Tasmania (Figure 116) than it is to surrounding islands, that were all formed either by volcanic activity or are coral atolls. The supercontinent Gondwana began to split apart during the Cretaceous some 125 million years ago, with Australia and New Zealand separating about 80 million years ago. New Caledonia finally split from New Zealand during the Oligocene approximately 25 million years ago,538 stranding the population of plants and animals in a small, isolated location.

Table 2: Biodiversity and endemism in New Caledonia.

Taxonomic Group Species Endemic Species Percent Endemism Plants 3,270 2,432 74.4 Mammals 9 6 66.7 Birds 105 23 21.9 Reptiles 70 62 88.6 Amphibians 0 0 0 Freshwater Fishes 85 9 10.6

Mammals: All of New Caledonia's nine land mammal species are bats; five Microchiroptera and four Megachiroptera or flying foxes. Six of these bat species are endemic. Reptiles: There is an extremely high level of reptile endemism in this hotspot. More than 60 of about 70 terrestrial reptiles are endemic, as are 11 of 23 genera. Freshwater Fishes: Aquatic diversity on the islands is high given the size of the hotspot, with about 85 species of freshwater fish, although less than 10 are endemic. Invertebrates: Among invertebrates, the hotspot supports a rich endemic diversity of land snails, although only 200 species have been described out of an estimated 400 to 600 species. The hotspot has an estimated 37 species of macro-crustaceans, of which 40 percent are endemic. About 4,000 insect species have been catalogued to date, showing high endemism at the species and genus levels. 538 Keith Corbett, Gondwana Timeline: Geological History and Australian Flora, Australian Plant Society, Available: http://www.apstas.com/gondwanatimeline.htm, 21 September 2011. 210

This isolation led to endemism in the fauna and flora of New Caledonia. Tasmania, an island state, is also known for its endemic fauna and flora—the Tasmanian Tiger, Tasmanian Devil, Huon Pine for example. This level of endemism within the natural history of New Caledonia and Tasmania has generated intense interest in the fauna and flora of these places from the earliest scientific voyages of exploration in the late eighteenth century.

Natural history illustration

James Cook’s second voyage to the southern oceans included both Tasmania and New Caledonia. The naturalists and artists on this expedition were German

father and son team, Johann Reinhold Forster (1729– Figure 118: New Caledonian Night 1798) and Johann Georg Forster (1754–1794). We Heron, Georg therefore have the same artists and naturalists working Forster. on the natural history of Tasmania and New Caledonia, producing publications that encompass both regions.

Georg Forster published his account of the voyage, A voyage round the world in His Britannic Majesty's sloop, Resolution, commanded by Capt. James Cook, during the years 1772, 3, 4, and 5 in 1777, which was followed the next year by his father’s account

Figure 117: 539 Passiflora aurantia, Observations made during a voyage round the world. Georg Forster. The illustrations are among the first drawings of New Caledonian fauna and flora. Georg Forster’s illustrations include birds, for example, the New Caledonian Night Heron (Figure 117) and a member of the passionfruit family, Passiflora auranta (Figure 118).

539 Georg Forster, A Voyage Round the World in His Britannic Majesty's Sloop Resolution, Commanded by Capt. James Cook, During the Years, 1772, 3, 4 and 5 (London: White, 1777), Johann Reinhold Forster, Observations Made During a Voyage Round the World (London: G. Robinson, 1778). 211

The illustration of the New Caledonian Night Heron (Figure 117) at the Natural History Museum, London is an incomplete rough watercolour and pencil sketch. It

appears to have been made in situ using a live or recently Figure 119: Pie de killed bird. The fact that it has not been finished lends la Nouvell Caledonie. itself to the idea that Georg Forster made quick sketches like this to give himself enough information to complete a more detailed painting later. The botanical illustration of Passiflora aurantia (Figure 118) shows a completed, published illustration by Forster.

The early French expeditions also travelled from

Tasmania to New Caledonia. The D’Entrecasteaux Figure 120: Antholoma montana expedition of 1791–1793 visited both islands. On board by Pierre-Joseph this voyage was the botanist Jacques-Julien Houtou de Redouté. Labillardière who played such an important role in the botany of Tasmania. He compiled an extensive herbarium on the voyage, with which, as Edward Duyker notes, ‘he produced his magnificent two-volume Novae Hollandiae plantarun specimen (1804–1806) and his Sertum austro- caledonicum (1824–1825), pioneering works of Australian and New Caledonian botany. Labillardière also published Relation du voyage à la recherche de la Pérouse in 1800’.540 These publications were, ‘in practical terms, the first published floras of New Holland and New Caledonia’.541 As such they are of historical significance to both places.

Labillardière’s publications contained not only botanical illustrations, but also ornithological drawings by Jacques Louis Peree (1769–1803) and Jean Baptiste Audebert (1759–1800). Published in 1817, the illustration by

540 Edward Duyker, "A French Garden in Tasmania: The Legacy of Félix Delahaye (1767– 1829)," : a journal of French-Australian connections 37 (2004), p.13. 541 Edward Duyker, "The Word in French: The Role of French Books in Australian History," National Library of Australia News 12 (2001), < ISSN: 1035-753X. [cited 25 Aug 08].>. 212

Audebert—who did not visit New Caledonia—of the endemic Pie de la Nouvelle Caledonie (Figure 119) is unconvincing, appears stiff and wooden, as if drawn from a skin or stuffed bird. This again illustrates the

Figure 122: difference of the jizz drawings by artists working in situ. Hachettea austro- These volumes contained illustrations of the flora of the calednia, Auguste voyage, some by the artist Joseph-Pierre Redouté who Faguet. contributed illustrations to Relation du voyage à la recherche de la Pérouse (Figure 120).

The French scientific expeditions of Dumont d’Urville

also visited the two places; the first in 1826–1829 and Figure 121: Little Pied Cormorant, the second in 1837–1840. A number of illustrated John Gould. publications resulted from these expeditions including, Voyage de decouvertes autour du monde et a la recherche de La Pérouse / par M.J. Dumont d’Urville, Capitaine de Vaisseau, Execute sous son commandement et par ordre du gouvernement, sur La Corvette L'Astrolabe pendant les années 1826, 1827, 1828 et 1829.by Dumont d'Urville, Jules-Sébastien-César, 1790–1842. Paris: A La Librairie Encyclopédique De Roret, 1832–34, which includes illustrations of fauna and flora from both Tasmania and New Caledonia.542 Figure 121 of the Balanophoraceae (Hachettea austrocaledonia), a plant endemic to New Caledonia, is a chromolithograph by French botanical illustrator Auguste Faguet (1841–1886). It appears in Henri Ernest Baillon’s (1827–1895) Histoire naturelle des plantes published between 1876 and 1892

Interest in the unique fauna and flora of New Caledonia resulted in a number of illustrations appearing in British publications. However, these images were

542 Jacques-Julien Houtou de La Billardière, Relation Du Voyage À La Recherche De La Pérouse / Fait Par Ordre De L'assemblée Constituante, Pendant Les Années 1791, 1792. Et Pendant La 1ère. Et La 2ce. Année De La République Françoise. Par Le Cen Labillardière. Correspondant De L'academie Des Sciences De Paris, Membre De La Societe D'histoire Naturelle, Et L'un Des Naturalistes De L'expedition (Paris: Chex H.J. Jansen, 1800). 213

often drawn by people who had never travelled to the country itself, and therefore are presumably based on illustrations of caged birds, or skins, stuffed or preserved animal specimens.

Figure 123: Moorak, In his Birds of Australia, John Gould included an Animal Kingdom illustration of the Little Pied Cormorant, Phalacrocorax Illustrated. melanoleucos, a bird also found in New Caledonia (Figure 122). An image of the Mooruk (Figure 123) appeared in the Animal Kingdom Illustrated Vol. 2, 1859. They described the bird thus, ‘The mooruk is a very curious bird, recently discovered in New Caledonia, and a specimen of which is in the London Zoological Gardens’. A skeletal illustration of the Kagu or Cagou, Rhynochetos jubatus, endemic to the dense mountain forests of New Caledonia appeared in the 1869 Transactions of the Zoological Society of London (Figure 124).543 The Cagou, the national symbol of New Caledonia, is now an endangered species with only 300–500 believed to exist in the wild.

None of the illustrations discussed above were drawn by New Caledonians. They were created ‘out of place’ and ‘out of context’ by European scientists and artists who had no sense of belonging to the place these plants and animals were found. Are the settlers of New Caledonia reappropriating these images in the same manner as Tasmanians?

Figure 124: Cagou.

543 Zoological Society of London 7.7 (1869). 214

Natural history art collections in New Caledonia

A people cannot develop a real sense of nationalism without learning to appreciate their own history.544

And, they also do not develop any real sense of belonging to place. An investigation into the collections of the major institutions in New Caledonia reveals a lack of any real historical collections of natural history art. Nouméa, the capital of New Caledonia, has a number of public institutions to house the country’s artefacts; the Bernheim Public Library, the Museum of New Caledonia, the Nouméa Municipal Museum, the Tjibaou Cultural Centre, the New Caledonian Zoological and Forest Park, the Maritime History Museum and Aquarium des Lagoons. In February 2009, I travelled to New Caledonia to visit these institutions to examine their collections of natural history art relating to the early exploration of the country, and compare them to the collections held in Tasmanian institutions.

The Bernheim Library in Nouméa has in its collections a number of publications relating to the early European exploration of the country including a number of publications on the subject of La Pérouse and d’Entrecasteaux. Books in this collection include works by Dumont d’Urville, Labillardière and Vancouver. However, there are no collections of prints of the native fauna and flora from these publications on display.

The original collections held at the Bernheim Library were a gift to the public from former mine owner Lucien Bernheim. The library, which bears his name, opened in 1905 and, as with Tasmania’s Allport Museum and Art Gallery, it started as a private collection. It now contains more than 90,000 volumes, including many important works on New Caledonia and the Pacific islands. A search of the Bernheim Library catalogue on their website is not possible— there being no public access, unlike the State Library of Tasmania website—

544 Frédéric Bobin, "Caldoches, Metropolitans and the Mother Country," The Journal of Pacific History 26.2 (1991), p.308. 215 therefore it was not possible to assess the importance of historical publications or natural history illustrations to their collections without visiting the library.

At the Bernheim Library I met the librarians Miriam Prin and Montaigne Pentecost, who gave me access to the library’s full catalogue. This revealed that there are relatively few original publications of the area’s early history held in the collection, and certainly no original paintings or prints of natural history illustrations. The few books that are held are not accessible to the public, unlike in Tasmania. I was also able to go through the shelves of the library to see what was available to the public. While there is a section relating to the early history and fauna and flora of the country, there is no ‘ana’ collection, as such. The natural history volumes are illustrated by photographs, not by illustrations.

The Bernheim Library is the only cultural institution with any real collections relating to the natural history art of the early explorers.

The Museum of New Caledonia now concentrates on the ethnography of the Kanak and Oceanic populations of the country. Marianne Tissandier writes, ‘The natural history collections were dispersed and the museum’s ambitions were focussed on Melanesian and particularly Kanak art and society’.545

There is no record of the whereabouts of the natural history collections that were dispersed—but it is most probable they were sent to France, as were the collections of the Maritime History Museum. Professor Gabriel Valet, of the Museum informed me that:

… all the collections, drawings and documents that have been collected by all major explorers and French scientists are in France … There is absolutely nothing in New Caledonia from the expeditions of the French Navy or any other expedition, only the

545 Marianne Tissander, "Museums of New Caledonia: The Old, the New and the Balance " South Pacific Museums: Experiments in Culture, eds. Chris Healy and Andrea Witcomb (Clayton, Vic: Monash University Press, 2006), p.03.1. 216

Museum of Maritime History has a few items from the wreck of La Pérouse to Vanikoro (La Pérouse did not visit Tasmania ...).546

That this important historical material is in France and is not collected by the Caldoches and Metropoles547 as New Caledonian history supports the argument that a society needs to acknowledges their own history before they can gain a sense of belonging to that place. In New Museums and the Making of Culture, Kylie Message notes:

... demonstrates how cultural institutions in the Pacific have drawn attention to the material evidence and memory of past encounters through the objects that are collected, stored, exhibited, and sometimes repatriated.548

Kylie Message here is referring only to the repatriation of material of the indigenous Kanak people collected by the early explorers. However, Ian McLean argues that,

Today Aboriginal Australians are having some success in repatriating their cultural property and, in the process, enriching and strengthening their identity. It is time that Euro-Australians did the same.549

The recent acquisition of the George Raper natural history drawings and the TAL&Dai-ichi Life (Earl of Derby) watercolours by Australian libraries indicates the different collecting policies, and significance of the early European material, to the two societies.

The Nouméa Municipal Museum is housed in what was originally the first bank of Nouméa, a beautiful nineteenth century building built in 1874. The museum’s permanent exhibition outlines the development of Nouméa, including the establishment of the town and the convict settlement period,

546 Gabriel Valet, Recherche De Documents Sur Les Explorateurs En Tasmanie Et En Nouvelle-Calédonie, 22 November 2008, Anita Hansen. 547 Caldoches (descendents of the original French settlers and convicts), the Metropoles (recent French immigrants). 548 Kylie Message, New Museums and the Making of Culture (Oxford: Berg, 2006), p.139. 549 Ian McLean, "Reclaiming Australia: The Port Jackson School and Its Exile," Art and Australia 33.1 (1995). 217

however the exhibits concentrate on the New Caledonian participation in World War 1. As French citizens, European New Caledonians were conscripted into the French services during the war, where they were sent to the worst troublespots and suffered terrible losses. There are no natural history exhibits, although there is an Figure 125: The historical garden on the grounds. Tjibaou Cultural

Centre. The architecturally stunning Tjibaou Cultural Centre (Figure 125) is inspired by Kanak culture. It is dedicated to the enhancement/study of Kanak culture, and contains collections of artefacts, libraries and learning centres. This is not, however, without controversy. Kylie Message notes, ‘While many support the work it [Tjibaou Cultural Centre] it does in promoting Kanak cultural identity and representing this to the world, others have criticised it as a biased symbol that is either too focused on Kanak culture or ‘not Kanak enough’.550

In examining collections of cultural institutions of New Caledonia, the lack of natural history art is evident. New Caledonia, like Tasmania, is noted for its unique endemic fauna and flora, so there is no lack of subjects to illustrate. The exotic plants and animals of Australia and the Pacific excited the scientists and artists of the second scientific revolution of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with both British and French scientific expeditions visiting them. As the same expeditioners often visited both places during the same voyage, why is there such a difference in the collection of the materials by their cultural institutions?

National identity and belonging

It has been argued that, while the land provides food and shelter, the landscape provides ideologies.551

550 Kylie Message, New Museums and the Making of Culture (Oxford: Berg, 2006), p.162. 551 Erin Manning, Ephemeral Territories: Representing Nation, Home, and Identity in Canada (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), p.5. 218

Canadians certainly have turned to the wild, uninhabited northern landscape in their national imaginary, in their search for a national identity.

The settler societies of the former British colonies of Australia, New Zealand and Canada are grappling with a common problem; that of identity and belonging in this postcolonial era of the twenty-first century. During the gaining of self-government and independence through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, art has played a role in the representation of nation for these countries, but it is not until a settler society begins to identify with place that this role can gain real importance.

The prominence of the role of natural history art in that sense of belonging is determined by a number of factors including; the era in which Europeans first settled, the uniqueness of the fauna and flora, and the extent of independence from its coloniser.

For example, while Canada has similar strong issues and interest in the search for identity, landscape art has taken the dominant role in representation of national identity. In New Caledonia, yet to gain independence from France, the European settlers have not placed a high significance on its natural history art collections, and have returned them to France. The Caldoches (descendents of the original French settlers and convicts), the Metropoles (recent French immigrants) and the Vietnamese, Javanese and Chinese migrants do not, as yet, associate themselves entirely with their new home and therefore do not collect natural history artefacts to create their own history. It is, however, the art and culture of the indigenous Kanak people, who also search for their own identity and independence, which is celebrated and forms the collections of the cultural institutions.

Frédéric Bobin suggests a number of reasons for the conflicting influences that affect the forming of a New Caledonian identity for the Caldoches. On the one hand, the Caldoches have often opposed the Parisian Administration, but they have not been able to form their own independent nation, as countries such as Australia and Canada have. He claims that, ‘The essential reason for this has 219 been the existence of a numerically superior indigenous community, which in the 1970s began to tilt towards nationalist demands. In search of safety, the Caldoches realigned themselves with Paris.552

Bobin argues that there are four possible explanations for the lack of an independent New Caledonian identity amongst the settlers. ‘First, a people cannot develop a real sense of nationalism without learning to appreciate their own history’.553 According to Bobin, the Caldoches have been loath to accept their convict past. While this was also the case in the days following the cessation of transportation to Tasmania, today having convict ancestry is something of which many Tasmanians are proud.554 The lack of appreciation of their own history, should include not only the convict past, but also, importantly the European exploration of their home. In returning the natural history specimens and art of that period to France, the Calchodes have few material artefacts to build a history upon. Unlike Tasmania, where not only were natural history specimens and art collected and kept in the colony from early settlement, it is still actively appropriated and reappropriated from the former colonial metropole.

The second reason Bobin suggests is economical as, ‘apart from nickel, the economy is totally dependent on financial transfers from the metropole,’ and, ‘third, unlike their counterparts in Australia and New Zealand, the descendants of Caledonian colonialism have been confronted with the ‘problem’ presented by indigenous people not only in moral but in concrete political terms’.555 The fourth reason Bobin suggests is, ‘the influence of newcomers, Pieds Noirs and metropolitans who quickly took over the local economy and local politics, had

552 Frédéric Bobin, "Caldoches, Metropolitans and the Mother Country," The Journal of Pacific History 26.2 (1991), p.303. 553 Frédéric Bobin, "Caldoches, Metropolitans and the Mother Country," The Journal of Pacific History 26.2 (1991), p.303. 554 See Alison Alexander, Tasmania's Convicts: How Felons Built a Free Society (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2010), Roslynn Haynes, Tasmanian Visions: Landscapes in Writing, Art and Photography (Sandy Bay, Tas: Polymath Press, 2006). 555 Frédéric Bobin, "Caldoches, Metropolitans and the Mother Country," The Journal of Pacific History 26.2 (1991) pp.307–09. 220 the effect of weakening Caldoche identity. Having no local roots whatsoever, these newcomers have no interest in the development of New Caledonian nationalism.556

Review

The European settlers of Canada and New Caledonia have reached very different periods in their search for identity and sense of belonging. This is evident in the material they have acquired and retain in the collections of their major cultural institutions. Until a settler society believes their new home to be their centre, a place unique, a place they identify with, and begin to create their own history, they do not begin to gain a sense of belonging to place.

In Canada, a former colony that has gained independence from its imperial ruler, the search for a national identity focuses on its unique wilderness. Many consider the landscape painting of the Group of Seven to be ‘the basis of a homogenous notion of culture and belonging’,557 and it has become dominant in the notion of identity in Canada. However, Canadians are also creating their history through the collection of ‘Canadiana’, which includes early examples of natural history art associated with their fauna and flora.

The non-indigenous settlers of New Caledonia, yet to be fully independent of their imperial ruler, have not developed the sense of belonging to place seen in Tasmania and Canada. They do embrace their own history, including that of early exploration and settlement. The lack of artefacts relating to these periods in their cultural institutions is arguably a reflection of their unwillingness to fully accept their convict heritage, and a limited interest in documenting the early exploration history of the islands. Indeed, all natural history material relating to the early exploration and settlement of the islands has been sent to the imperial centre in France.

556 Frédéric Bobin, "Caldoches, Metropolitans and the Mother Country," The Journal of Pacific History 26.2 (1991), pp.307–309. 557 Erin Manning, Ephemeral Territories: Representing Nation, Home, and Identity in Canada (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), p.2. 221

CONCLUSION

This thesis has been written to present a parallel discourse to landscape art as representative of identity and belonging in Australia’s island, Tasmania, using nineteenth century natural history art as its subject. As settler societies examine the contentious and complex notion of belonging in a postcolonial era, it is in the content of the collections of their cultural institutions—the museums, art galleries and libraries—that we see what is deemed to be of significance to that sense of belonging. The nineteenth century natural history art collections in the cultural institutions of Tasmania are of profound importance in its imaging of a sense of place.

When members of a settler society move from perceiving themselves at the periphery of an empire, they create their own history as they begin to imagine themselves at the centre of their own unique society. In Tasmania, it is what is unique to that place, that is, its wilderness, its environment and most importantly, its fauna and flora and the depiction of them that we see celebrated in the historical collections, the Tasmaniana collections. By examining the context in which the nineteenth century natural history art in the collections was created, the transfer in allegiance from faraway imperial power to local can be traced. A reversal of periphery and centre as a sense of belonging is forged with the new home, as an alien space is recognised as familiar place, as a colony becomes home to the colonisers.

Many would argue that Westerners do not have spiritual connections to place, unlike the Indigenous people of the lands they have colonised. It is clear that in Tasmania a strong sense of belonging to place is evident. Place can ‘call’ individuals, that is, place is a spiritual entity that ‘calls’ an individual to it, and the island state of Tasmania does inspire a strong sense of connectedness to it. Yi-Fu Tuan states, ‘Human groups nearly everywhere tend to regard their own homeland as the centre of the world. A people who believe they are at the

222 centre claim, implicitly, the ineluctable worth of their location’.558 In Tasmania, it is with images of its fauna and flora, and not man-made edifices that are privileged as signifiers of belonging in the public cultural institutions of the state.

Susan Pearce notes, ‘Museums are an important part of the way society makes its history’.559 All of Australia’s colonial museums began with natural history, not national history collections, and these still play a significant role in the sense of belonging of these societies. Tasmania’s unique natural history and its discovery by Europeans at the height of the second scientific revolution resulted in a legacy of exquisite images of its native fauna and flora as arguably the greatest natural history illustrators of the era painted them, among them Pierre-Joseph Redouté, Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, Ferdinand Bauer. However, these artists created their images far from the island, and the habitat where the plants and animals they illustrated lived in the metropolitan centres of England and France.

The natural history illustrations of the convict artist William Buelow Gould are among the first by an artist actually living in the colony. As an exiled convict, Gould’s exquisite zoological and botanical illustrations were created for his gaolers. He had no sense of belonging, either to the images he created, or to the place the images represented. The natural history illustrations of the women free settlers, for example those of Mary Morton Allport and Louisa Anne Meredith, were created as a means of coming to terms with the alien environment of their new homes. As the Tasmanian-born children of the first settlers grew to adulthood, some also turned to the fauna and flora for inspiration. William Archer, the first Australian-born botanist and botanical illustrator, took his botanical illustrations to the imperial metropolis, thereby playing an important role in conceptual shift from periphery to centre.

558 Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press, 1977). p.149. 559 Susan Pearce, "A New Way of Looking at Old Things," Museum International 51.2 (1999), p.14. 223

It is clear that natural history does not fulfil as strong a role in the sense of belonging in other settler societies. In New Caledonia, for example, all natural history art collections have been returned to the metropolitan centre, France. Frédéric Bobin contends that a lack of acknowledgment of European history of New Caledonia as their own, by the settlers, is the reason for this lack of a sense of identity. As the floras and faunas of Canada were somewhat familiar to the Europeans it is the unique wilderness of their country that Canadians have turned to in their search for identity. Landscape art, particularly that of the Group of Seven, has become almost synonymous with identity in Canada.

It is to what is distinctive that a society turns in forging their sense of belonging to place. In Tasmania, more so than anywhere else, it is the unique fauna and flora, and images of them, that are used—the native plants and animals that so baffled and intrigued Europeans when they first encountered them. The natural history art of the nineteenth century plays a unique and significant role in the sense of belonging to place in Tasmania.

224

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary sources Correspondence Archer, William, Archer, W. Diaries 1847–74 ---, Letters to W and Jd Hooker ClerkTown, City of Launceston, Frank Ellis, Director, Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery Gunn, Ronald Campbell, Gunn's Correspondence, Ns 1313/1/1 Ellis, Frank, Letters Regarding the Purchase of William Buelow Gould Botanical Illustrations Ellis, Frank, Director Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Meade, Isabella, 22 January 1958, Hansen, Brita, Crayfish to Identify, 31 August 2011, Hansen, Anita Hugh-Smith, 6 June, 1958, Frank Ellis, Director, Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery Valet, Gabriel Recherche De Documents Sur Les Explorateurs En Tasmanie Et En Nouvelle-Calédonie, 22 November 2008, Hansen, Anita

Archives Allport, Mary Morton, Journal 1832–33 Archives, Tasmania. "Frederick Piguenit". 18 October 1830. 5 December 2012. ---. "Gould, William Buelow". 12 December, 2012. ---. "Convict Department". 1 December 2012. 12 December 2012. ---. "Cus30/1/1 P62". 1 December 2012.

225

---. "Mb2-39-1-1-Image011". 12 December 2012. Australia, National Archives of. "Constitution Act 1855 (Tas)". Canada, Library and Archives. "Early Images of Canada: Illustrations from Rare Books". 2011. 19 July 2011. Martin, Robert Francis. Diary of the Voyage of the Asia, Arrived 7 December 1827. Tasmanian Archives, Hobart.

Newspapers Hobart Town Chronicle 23 March 1833 Launceston Examiner, "Mr Piguenit’s Latest Painting." 27 June 1879, p.2 Northampton Mercury 19 August, 1827, http://britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/search/results/1826-07-08/1826- 09-10?newspapertitle=northampton520mercury&sortorder Sydney Morning Herald, 7 September, "The Art Society: The Annual Banquet." 1891 ---. "The Late Mr W. C. Piguenit." 20 July 1914, p.11 -. 19 November 2012. "Early Birds Which Fly Off the Page". 2011. The Mercury, "Mrs Meredith's Bush Friends." 1860, p.3 ---."Mr W. C.Piguenit." 1 April 1903, p.7 ---."Willam Charles Piguenit: An Australian Painter." 9 January 1906, p.8 ---. "A Veteran Artist Mr Wc Piguenit: Tasmanian Scenery." 25 April 1912, .p6

Government Reports Gallery, Tasmanian Museum and Art. Annual Report. Hobart: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 2009–2010 Morton, Alex. "1892 – Parliament of Tasmania – Victorian Museum and Art Gallery Launceston : Report for 1891 (No 33)." Launceston, 1892

226

Scott, H.H. "Annual Report 1902, Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery." 1902 ---. "Annual Report 1907– Curator of the Victorian Museum." 1907

Books, book chapters, journal articles and exhibition catalogues Albin, Eleazar. A Natural History of Birds: Illustrated with Two Hundred and Five Copper Plates, Curiously Engraven from the Life. London: Royal Society, 1738 Baudin, Nicolas, and Christine Cornell. The Journal of Post Captain Baudin, Commander-in-Chief of the Corvettes Geographe and Naturaliste / Assigned by Order of the Government to a Voyage of Discovery. Adelaide: Libraries Board of South Australia, 1974 Bauer, Ferdinand. Illustrationes Florae Novae Hollandiae, Sive, Icones Generum Quae in Prodromo Florae Novae Hollandiae Et Insulae Van Diemen Descripsit Robertus Brown. London: Veneunt apud auctorem, 1813 Chamberlin, Agnes. Canadian Wildflowers. Montreal: J. Lovell, 1868 ---. Studies of Plant Life in Canada. Ottawa: A.S. Woodburn, 1885 D'Entrecasteaux, Antoine Raymond Joseph de Bruni, chevalier d', Edward Duyker, and Maryse Duyker. Bruny D'entrecasteaux: Voyage to Australia and the Pacific, 1791–1793 Trans. Duyker, Edward and Maryse Duyker. Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2001 Dixon, James. Narrative of a Voyage to New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land. Edinburgh: John Anderson, 1822 Dumont d'Urville, Jules-Sebastien-Cesar. Voyage Au Pole Sud Et Dans L'oceanie : Sur Les Corvettes L'astrolabe Et La Zelee, Execute Par Ordre Du Roi Pendant Les Annees 1837, 1838, 1839, 1840 Sous Le Commandement De J. Dumont D'urville, Capitaine De Vaisseau. Histoire Du Voyage / Par M. Dumont D'urville : Publie Par Ordonnance De Sa Majeste Sous La Direction Superieure De M. Jacquinot. Paris: Gide, 1855 ---. Voyage De Decouvertes De L'astrolabe, Execute Pendant Les Annees 1826, 1827, 1828, Et 1829. Observations Nautiques, Meteorologiques,

227

Hydrographiques Et De Physique Paris: Public par le Ministere de la Marine, 1833 Endlicher, Stephan. Prodromus Florae Norfolkicae. Vindoboae: Apud Fridericum Beck, 1833 Evans, George William. A Geographical, Historical, and Topographical Description of Van Diemen's Land. London: John Souter, 1822 Flinders, Matthew. A Voyage to Terra Australis. London: G&W Nicol, 1814 Flinders, Matthew, and Tim Flannery (edited and introduced). Terra Australis: Matthew Flinders' Great Adventures in the Circumnavigation of Australia / Edited and Introduced by Tim Flannery. Melbourne, Vic, c2000 Forster, Georg. A Voyage Round the World in His Britannic Majesty's Sloop Resolution, Commanded by Capt. James Cook, During the Years, 1772, 3, 4 and 5. London: White, 1777 Forster, Johann Reinhold. Observations Made During a Voyage Round the World. London: G. Robinson, 1778 Forster, Johann Reinhold, and Michael Hoare. The Resolution Journal of Johann Reinhold Forster, 1772–1775. London: Hakluyt Society, 1982 Gessner, Conrad. Historiae Animalium. Zurich, 1551 Gould, John. The Birds of Australia: And the Adjacent Islands. London: John Gould, 1838 ---. The Birds of Europe. London: John Gould, 1837 ---. Birds of Australia. London: Printed by Richard and John E. Taylor, published by the author, 1848–1869 ---. A Century of Birds from the Himalaya Mountains. London: John Gould, 1832 ---. A Monograph of the Macropodidae, or Family of Kangaroos. London: John Gould, 1842 ---. The Mammals of Australia. London: the author, 1863 Hawkesworth, John. An Account of the Voyages Undertaken by the Order of His Present Majesty, for the Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere, and Successfully Performed by Commodore Byron, Captain Wallis, Captain Carteret, and Captain Cook, in the Dolphin, the Swallow, and the Endeavour: Drawn up from the Journals Which Were Kept by the 228

Several Commanders, and from the Papers of Joseph Banks. Lodon: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1773 Hooker, Joseph Dalton. The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of H. M. Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror in the Years 1839–1843, under the Command of Captain Sir James Clark Ross: Flora Tasmaniae. London: Lovell Reeve, 1859 ---. The Botany of the Antarctic Voyage of H. M. Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror in the Years 1839–1843, under the Command of Captain Sir James Clark Ross: Ii: Flora Novae-Zelandiae. 2 v. : illus. vols. London: Lovell Reeve, 1845 Hooker, William Jackson. "Article 3145." Curtis's Botanical Magazine VI (of the new series), vol 59 (1832) ---. "Article 3187." Curtis's Botanical Magazine VI (of the new series), vol 59 (1832) Jeffreys, Charles. Van Diemen's Land: Geographical and Descriptive Delineations of the Island of Van Diemen's Land. London: J.M. Richardson, 1820 Khare, Vadna. "Impasse in New Caledonia." Economic and Political Weekly 22 40 (1987) 1693 Labillardière, Jacques-Julien Houtou de. Relation Du Voyage À La Recherche De La Pérouse / Fait Par Ordre De L'assemblée Constituante, Pendant Les Années 1791, 1792. Et Pendant La 1ère. Et La 2ce. Année De La République Françoise. Par Le Cen Labillardière. Correspondant De L'academie Des Sciences De Paris, Membre De La Societe D'histoire Naturelle, Et L'un Des Naturalistes De L'expedition. Paris: Chex H.J. Jansen, 1800 ---. Novae Hollandiae Plantarum Specimen. Parisiis: Huzard, 1804 Le Guillou, Elie. Voyage Autour Du Monde De L'astrolabe Et De La Zelee, Sous Les Ordres Du Contre-Amiral Dumont-D'urville, Pendant Les Annees 1837, 38, 39 Et 40 / Par Elie Le Guillou ; Ouvrage Enrichi De Nombreux Dessins Et De Notes Scientifiques, Mis En Ordre Par J. Arago. Paris: Berquet et Petion, 1842 L'Heritier de Brutelle, Charles Louis. Sertum Anglicum, Seu Plantae Rariores Quae in Hortis Juxta Londinum, Imprimis in Horto Regio Kewensi 229

Excoluntur, Ab Anno 1786 Ad Annum 1787 Observatae. Parisis: Petri- Francisci Didot, 1788 Lycett, Joseph. Views in Australia, or, New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land Delineated. London: John Souter, 1824 Melville, Henry. History of the Island of Van Diemen's Land from the Year 1824 to 1835 Inclusive During the Administration of Lieutenant Governor George Arthur. London: John Richardson, 1836 Meredith, Louisa Anne. Bush Friends in Tasmania: Native Flowers, Fruits and Insects. London: Macmillan, 1891 ---. My Home in Tasmania During a Residence of Nine Years. London: John Murray, 1852 ---. Notes and Sketches of New South Wales: During a Residence in That Colony from 1839 to 1844. Murray's Home and Colonial Library #14. London: John Murray, 1844 ---. Our Island Home: A Tasmanian Sketchbook. Hobart: Walch & Sons, 1879 ---. Our Wildflowers Familiarly Described and Illustrated: By Louisa Anne Twamley. London: Charles Tilt, 1839 ---. Over the Straits: A Visit to Victoria. London: Chapman and Hall, 1861 ---. Poems by Louisa Anne Twamley: With Original Illustrations, Drawn and Etched by the Authoress. London: Charles Tilt, 1835 ---. Tasmanian Friends and Foes, Feathered, Furred and Finned: A Family Chronicle of Country Life, Natural History, and Veritable Adventure Hobart Town: J. Walch & Sons, 1880 Meredith, Louisa Anne (Twamley). The Romance of Flowers: Or, the Flower- Seasons Illustrated. London: Charles Tilt, 1836 Mitchel, John. Jail Journal. Dublin: M. H. Gill and Son, Ltd, 19?? Parkinson, Sydney. Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas. London: Caliban Books, 1984 Péron, François, Louis de Freycinet, and Christine Cornell. Voyage of Discovery to the Southern Lands: Book V Comprising Chapters Xxxv to Xli. Trans. Cornell, Christine. Adelaide: Friends of the State Library of South Australia, 2007

230

---. Voyage of Discovery to the Southern Lands: Books I to Iii. Trans. Cornell, Christine. Adelaide: Friends of the State Library of South Australia, 2006 Péron, François. Voyage De Découvertes Aux Terres Australes: Exécuté Par Ordre De S. M. L'empereur Et Roi, Sur Les Corvettes Le Géographe, Le Naturaliste, Et La Goëlette Le Casuarina, Pendent Les Années 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803 Et 1804. Paris: Arthus Bertrand, 1824 Skibthorp, John Flora Graeca. London: Richard Taylor, 1806 Smith, Ure. Picturesque Atlas of Australasia: Facsimile Ed. Cover Title: Australia: The First Hundred Years, Being a Fascimilie of Volumes I & Ii of the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia, 1888. Originally Published in 3 V.: Sydney, Picturesque Atlas Publishing Co., 1886–88. Sydney, 1974 The Picturesque Atlas of Australasia. Sydney: The Picturesque Atlas Publishing Co., 1886–1888 The Royal Society of Tasmania Papers and Proceedings Annual Report (1862) The Royal Society of Tasmania Papers and Proceedings (1849) ---. (1864) ---. (1881) Watling, John. Letter from an Exile at Botany Bay, to His Aunt in Dumfies. Penrith, 1794 White, John. Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales: With Sixty-Five Plates of Non Descript Animals, Birds, Lizards, Serpents, Curious Cones of Trees and Other Natural Productions. London: J. Debrett, 1757 Zoological Society of London 7 7 (1869) pp.523, 24

Webpages "Agnes Chamberlain Digital Collection". 2008. University of Toronto. Allport, Henry. "Gould, William Buelow (1801–1853)". Melbourne, 1966. Australian Dictionary of Biography. Melbourne University Press. 12 June 2011.

231

Arber, A. "Guild of Nature Science Illustrators". 2003. 14 December 2012. artnet. "William Buelow Gould". 2011. 31 August 2011. Australia, National Library of. "What We Collect: Australiana". 2008. 23 August 2008. ---. "Treasures from the National Library: John Gould's Birds of Australia". 2010. 3 May 2010. , Department of Immigration and Citizenship. Brinklow, Laurie. "The Proliferation of Isalnd Studies." (2011). 3 November 2011 . Burns, TE, and JR Skemp. "Gunn, Ronald Campbell (1808–1881)". 2006. Australian Dictionary of Biography–Online Edition. Australian National University. 30 March 2009. Canada, Library and Archives of. "Peter Winkworth Collection". 1 August 2011. "Colonial Natural History Drawings Come Home". ABC News. 7 June 2011. Commission, Australian Broadcasting. "Book Puts Tasmania on World Stage". 2011. 4 April 2011. Corbett, Keith. "Gondwana Timeline: Geological History and Australian Flora". Australian Plant Society. 21 September 2011.

232

Currey, C. H. "Denison, Sir William Thomas (1804–1871)". 1972. Australian National University. 31 August 2010. Delbridge, A (editor-in-chief). The Macquarie Dictionary: Second Revision. Ed. Delbridge, A. Sydney: University of New South Wales, 1982 Duyker, Edward. "The Word in French: The Role of French Books in Australian History." National Library of Australia News 12.1 (2001): pp. 7–10 pp. < ISSN: 1035-753X. [cited 25 Aug 08].>. Edition, Australian Dictionary of Biography Online. "William Charles Piguenit". Melbourne, 1974. Melbourne University Press. 28 June 2011. Education, Department of. "Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts Annual Report". 2003. 20 October 2011. Ford, Brian J. "Scientific Illustration in the Eighteenth Century". 2000. 19 September 2011. Gardens, Australian National Botanical. 2003. 10 May 2011. Gardham, Julie. "Birds, Bees and Blooms: A Selection of Natural History Books from Special Collections ". 2007. University of Glasgow. "John James Audubon". 2011. National Audubon Society. "Inventaire De La Collection Lesueur". LeHavre. Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle. 17 November 2012. International, Conservation. "Biodiversity Hotspots". 2011. 17 July 2011. 233

Layberry, Ross A., Peter W. Hall, and J. Donald LaFontaine. "The History of Butterfly Study in Canada". 1998. (16/12/2003): Canadian Biodiversity Information Facility. 28/03/2008. Macmillan, David S. "Paterson, William (1775–1810)". Australian National Library. 24 August 2011. Marchant, Leslie R. "La Pérouse, Jean-François De Galaup (1741–1788)". 1967. Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. 15 September 2011. Marshall, Tony. "The State Library of Tasmania's Heritage Collections." CTHS Bulletin pp. 52–54 ---. "'the Choosing of a Proper Hobby': Sir William Crowther and His Library. [Paper In: Unfinished Business: Papers from the Forum on Australian Library History Held at the State Library of Nsw, Sydney, 27–29 September 2007. Jones, David J. (Ed.).]." Australian Library Journal 56 3–4 (2007) pp. 405–17 Morris, Deirdre. "Mueller, Sir Ferdinand Jakob Heinrich Von (1825–1896)". Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. 2 November 2011. "Natural History Treasures Return to Australia". 19 November 2011. Online, Oxford Dictionary. "Jizz". 1989. 22 September 2010. <> O’Neill, Dianne "Maria Morris Miller". 2009. Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.

234

O'Neill, Sally. "Meredith, Louisa Ann". 2006. Australian Dictionary of Biography Online. Australian National University. 6 May 2011. Rienits, Rex. " Watling, Thomas (1762– )".1967. Australian Dictionary of Biography Online. 24 Jan 2011. Silloway, Kari "Marie Tjibauo Cultural Center New Caledonia by Renzo Piano". 2004. 20 July 2011. Smith, Bernard William. " Glover, John (1767–1849)', Melbourne University Press, 1966, ". Melbourne, 1966. Australian Dictionary of Biography,Volume 1. pp 455–56. Melbourne University Press. 07 July 2010. "Tal&Dai-Ichi Life (Earl of Derby) Collection of Natural History Watercolours". 19 November 2012. "Tal&Dai-Ichi Life (Earl of Derby) Collection of Natural History Watercolours". 2012. State Library of New State Wales. 19 November 2012. Tasmania, State Library of. "William Walker". Ed. Archives. birth record. 25 September 2009. "Terra Nullius". South Yarra, 2005. The Macquarie Dictionary. The Macquarie Library Pty Ltd, Credo Reference. 4 January 2012. "The Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts". State Library of Tasmania. 13 December, 2012. Trott, Mary Bartram. "Backhouse, James (1794–1869)". Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National 235

University. 5 September 2011. Univerity, Australian National. "John Franklin". 29 April 2010. Ward, Paul. "Jules Sebastian César Dumont D'urville: L'astrolabe and Zéléé 1837–1840". 2010. 4 May 2010.

Winearls, Joan. "'Art on the Wing': A Tale of Two Collectors, Four Libraries." The Halcyon 22 (1998)

Secondary sources Books, book chapters, journal articles and exhibition catalogues Abbott, Denis. "The Scientific Results of the D'entrecasteaux Voyage in Van Dieman's Land, 1792–93." IAMSLIC Conference Proceedings 2004. Ed.: CSIRO Marine Research Adkins, Yvonne. "The Botanical Drawings of William Buelow Gould." Treasures of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery. Launceston, Tasmania: Foot and Playsted, c2006. 58–67 Aitken, Richard. Botanical Riches: Stories of Botanical Exploration. Ed. Coney, Clare. Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2006 Aikin, Roger Cushing. "Paintings of the Manifest Destiny: Mapping the Nation." American Art 14 3 (2000) 78–89 Albin, Eleazar. A Natural History of Birds: Illustrated with Two Hundred and Five Copper Plates, Curiously Engraven from the Life. London: Royal Society, 1738 Alexander, Alison. "The Legacy of the Convict System." Tasmanian Historical Studies 6 1 (1998) 48–59 ---. Tasmania's Convicts: How Felons Built a Free Society. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2010 Alexander, Alison, ed. The Companion to Tasmanian History. Hobart: Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies, University of Tasmania, 2005

236

Alpers, Svetlana. The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century. London: Penguin Books, 1989 Andrews, J. R. H. The Southern Ark: Zoological Discovery in New Zealand 1769–1900. Auckland: Century Hutchinson, 1986 Angus, I. A Border Within: National Identity, Cultural Plurality, and Wilderness. Montreal: McGill Queens Univercity Press, 1997 Arnold, Ken. Cabinets for the Curious: Looking Back at Early English Museums. Perspectives on Collecting. Ed. Pearce, Susan. Aldershot, Hants, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006 Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, eds. The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. London: Routledge, 1995 Ashworth, William B. jr. "Emblematic Natural History of the Renaissance." Cultures of Natural History. Eds. Jardine, N., J.A. Secord and E.C. Spary. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. pp.17–37 Atkinson, Alan. The Europeans in Australia: A History: Vol.1: The Beginning. Vol. 1. 2 vols. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1997 Attenborough, David, et al., eds. Amazing Rare Things: The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery. London: Royal Collection Enterprises, 2007 Austin, KA (Kenneth Ashurst). The Voyage of the Investigator, 1801–1803: Commander Matthew Flinders, R.N. Adelaide: Rigby, 1964 Axelby, Richard. "Calcutta Botanical Garden and the Colonial Re-Ordering of the Indian Environment." Archives of natural history 35 1 (2008) 150– 63 Baglione, Gabrielle, and Cédric Crémière. Charles-Alexandre Lesueur: Peintre Voyageur, Un Tresor Oublie. 2009 Baker, Sidney J. My Own Destroyer: A Biography of Matthew Flinders, Explorer and Navigator. Sydney: Currawong Pub. Co., 1962 Banks, MR, and AV Brown. Draft Report on the Art Collection of the Royal Society of Tasmania. Hobart: The Council of the Royal Society of Tasmania, 2002 Bann, Stephen. "On Living in a New Country." The New Museology. Ed. Vergo, Peter. London: Reaktion Books, 1989. pp. 99–118 237

Banner, Stuart. "Why Terra Nullius? Anthropology and Property Law in Early Australia." Law and History Review 23 1 (2005) pp. 96–132 Bantick, Christopher. "A Tasmanian Treasure: Hobart's Allport Library and Museum." National Library of Australia News November (2005) pp. 8–10 --- "The Remarkable Benefits of Philanthropy." National Library of Australia News February (2007) pp. 19–21 Barton, Ruth. "'Men of Science': Language, Identity and Professionalization in the Mid-Victorian Scientific Community." Science History Publications Ltd (2003) Baudin, Nicolas, and Christine Cornell. The Journal of Post Captain Baudin, Commander-in-Chief of the Corvettes Geographe and Naturaliste / Assigned by Order of the Government to a Voyage of Discovery. Adelaide: Libraries Board of South Australia, 1974 Bauer, Ferdinand. Illustrationes Florae Novae Hollandiae, Sive, Icones Generum Quae in Prodromo Florae Novae Hollandiae Et Insulae Van Diemen Descripsit Robertus Brown. London: Veneunt apud auctorem, 1813 Bauman, Zygmunt. "From Pilgrim to Tourist – or a Short History of Identity." Questions of Cultural Identity. Eds. Hall, Stuart and Paul Du Gay. London: Sage Publications, 2003. pp. 18–36 Beilharz, Peter. Imagining the Antipodes: Culture, Theory and the Visual in the Work of Bernard Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997 Beinart, Wiiliam, and Lotte Hughes, eds. Environment and Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007 Bennett, Scott, and Barbara Bennett. Biographical Register of the Tasmanian Parliament 1851–1960. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1980 Bentley, Michael. "The Evolution and Dissemination of Historical Knowledge." The Organisation of Knowledge in Victorian Britain. Ed. Daunton, Martin J. Oxford; New York: Published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press, 2005. pp.173–98 Berzins, Baiba. The Coming of the Strangers: Life in Australia 1788–1822. Ed. catalogue, exhibition: State Library of New South Wales 238

Bingham, Madelaine. The Making of Kew. London: Michael Joseph, 1975 Bhabha, Homi. "Culture's in-Between." Questions of Cultural Identity. Eds. Hall, Stuart and Paul du Gay. London: Sage Publications, 2003. pp. 53– 60 ---. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994 Blackton, Charles Stuart. "The Australaisian League, 1851–1854." Pacific Historical Review 8 4 (1939) pp. 385–400 Blair, Sandra. "The Felonry and the Free? Divisions in Colonial Society in the Penal Era." Labour History 45 (1983) pp. 1–16 Bleichmar, Daniela. "Painting as Exploration: Visualizing Nature in Eighteenth-Century Colonial Science." Rev. of 1 June 2006. Colonial Latin American Review 15 1 (2006) pp. 81–104 Bobin, Frédéric. "Caldoches, Metropolitans and the Mother Country." The Journal of Pacific History 26 2 (1991) pp.303–12 Boime, Albert. "John James Audubon: A Birdwatcher's Fanciful Flights." Art History 22 5 (1999) pp. 728–55 Bolger, Peter. Hobart Town. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1973 Bolton, Lissant. "Brushed with Fame: Museological Investments in the Cook Voyage Collections." Discovering Cook's Collections. Eds. Hetherington, Michelle and Howard Morphy. Canberra: National Museum of Australia Press, 2009. pp. 78–91 Bonnemains, Jacqueline. "The Artists of the Baudin Expedition." Baudin in Australian Waters: The Art Work of the French Voyage of Discovery to the Southern Lands (1800–1804). Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1988. pp. 15–18 ---. "Biography of Charles-Alexandre Lesueur." Baudin in Australian Waters: The Art Work of the French Voyage of Discovery to the Southern Lands (1800–1804). Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1988. pp. 19–26 Bonnemains, Jacqueline, et al., eds. Baudin in Australian Waters: The Artwork of the French Voyage of Discovery to the Southern Lands, 1800–1804. Melbourne: Oxford University Press in association with the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 1988

239

Bonnemains, Jacqueline. "The Artists of the Baudin Expedition." The Encounter, 1802: Art of the Flinders and Baudin Voyages. Ed. Thomas, Sarah. Adelaide: Art Gallery of South Australia, 2002 Bonyhady, Tim. Images in : Australian. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1985 ---. The Colonial Earth. Carlton South: Melbourne University Press, 2000 ---. The Colonial Image: Australian Painting 1800–1880. Chippendale, Australia: Ellsyd Press, 1987 Borch, Merete. "Rethinking the Origins of Terra Nullius." Australian Historical Studies 32 117 (2001) pp. 222–39 Bothwell, Robert. Canada and Quebec: One Country, Two Histories. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1998 Boyce, James. "Return to Eden: Van Diemen's Land and the Early British Settlement of Australia." Environment and History 14 (2008) pp. 289– 307 ---. Van Diemen's Land. Melbourne: Black Inc, 2008 Brockway, Lucile H. Science and Colonial Expansion: The Role of the British Royal Botanic Gardens. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002 Brown, Anthony J. Ill-Starred Captains: Flinders and Baudin. Hindmarsh, South Australia: Crawford House Publishing, 2000 Browne, Janet. "Biogeoraphy and Empire." Cultures of Natural History. Eds. Jardine, N., J.A. Secord and E.C. Spary. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. pp. 305–21 Brunton, Paul, ed. Matthew Flinders: Personal Letters from an Extraordinary Life. Sydney: Hordern House in association with the State Library of New South Wales, 2002 Burkhardt, Richard W Jr. "Naturalists' Practices and Nature's Empire: Paris and the Platypus, 1815–1833." Pacific Science 55 4 (2001) pp. 327–41 Burns, TE, and JR Skemp. Van Diemen's Land Correspondents 1827–1849. The Records of the Queen Victoria Museum. Hobart: Queen Victoria Museum, 1961 Butler, Roger. Printed: Images in Colonial Australia 1801–1901. Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 2007

240

Calaby, John, ed. The Hunter Sketchbook: Birds and Flowers of New South Wales Drawn on the Spot in 1788, 89 and 90 by Captain John Hunter Rn of the First Fleet. Canberra: National Library, 1989 Casey, Edward S. Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, c1993 Chamberlin, Agnes. Canadian Wildflowers. Montreal: J. Lovell, 1868 ---. Studies of Plant Life in Canada. Ottawa: A.S. Woodburn, 1885 Chappell, David A. "The Noumea Accord: Decolonization without Independence in New Caledonia?" Pacific Affairs 72 3 (1999) pp. 373– 91 Chinard, Gilbert. "The American Sketchbooks of Charles-Alexandre Lesueur." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society May 16, 1949 (1949) pp. 114–18 Chisholm, Alec H. The Story of Elizabeth Gould. Melbourne: The Hawthorn Press, 1944 Christie, John R. R. "Ideology and Representation in Eighteenth Century Natural History." Oxford Art Journal 13 1 (1990) pp. 3–10 Clark, C.M.H. Occasional Writing and Speeches. Melbourne, 1980 ---. A Short History of Australia: Illustrated Edition. Ringwod, Victoria: Penguin Books, 1963 Clode, Danielle. Continent of Curisoties. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2006 ---. Voyages to the South Seas: In Search of Terres Australes. Carlton, Victoria: Miegunyah Press, c2007 Collins, David, ed. Letters to Sir Joseph Banks. Malvern, Vic.: The Colony Press, 2004 Colwell, Max. The Voyages of Matthew Flinders. London: P. Hamlyn, 1970 Connor, Michael. The Invention of Terra Nullius: Historical and Legal Fictions on the Foundation of Australia. Sydney: Macleay Press, 2005 Coombes, Annie E., ed. Rethinking Settler Colonialism: History and Memory in Australia, Canada, Aoteoroa New Zealand and South Africa. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006 Cook, Ramsay. Canada, Quebec and the Uses of Nationalism. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Ltd, 1986 241

Copley, Stephen, and Peter Garside, eds. The Politics of the Picturesque. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994 Cornell, Christine. Questions Relating to Nicolas Baudin's Australian Expedition, 1800–1804. Adelaide: Libraries Board of South Australia, 1965 Cowley, Des, and Brian Hubber. "Distinct Creation: Early European Images of Australian Animals." The La Trobe Journal 66 (2000) pp. 3–32 Cronon, William. "Telling Tales on Canvas: Landscapes of Frontier Change." Discovered Lands, Invented Pasts: Transforming Visions of the American West. Ed. David, Jules. New Haven Yale University Press, 1992. pp. 56–201 Crowley, John E. "'Taken on the Spot': The Visual Appropriation of New France for the Global British Landscape." The Canadian Historical Review 86 1, March (2005) pp. 1–28 Dance, S. Peter. The Art of Natural History: Animal Illustrators and Their Work. London: Country Life Books, 1978 Darby, Garry. William Buelow Gould: Convict Artist of Van Diemen's Land. Canberra: Copperfield Publishing Co. Pty. Limited, 1980 Dawes, Sean. John Gould and the Fauna of Southern Australia. Adelaide: Crawford House Publishing, 2004 Dawson, John. "The Nullius Ideal: On "Terra Nullius Reborn" By Henry Reynolds." Quadrant July–August (2004) pp. 24–33 Dakis, Sallyanne. "The Botanical Art of Mary Morton Allport." Australian Garden History 8 5 (1997) pp.12–14 Darian-Smith, Kate, and Paula Hamilton, eds. Memory and History in Twentieth-Century Australia. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1994 de Vos, Paula. "Natural History and the Pursuit of Empire in Eighteenth- Century Spain." Eighteenth-Century Studies 40 2 (2007) pp. 209–39 Deans-Smith, Susan. "Nature and Scientific Knowledge in the Spanish Empire." Colonial Latin American Review 15 1, June (2006) pp. 29–38 De Bray, Lys. The Art of Botanical Illustration: A History of the Classic Illustrators and Their Achievements. Royston [England] Eagle Editions, 2001 242

Dickenson, Victoria. Drawn from Life: Science and Art in the Portrayal of the New World. Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, c1998 Dixon, James. Narrative of a Voyage to New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land. Edinburgh: John Anderson, 1822 Dixon, John Gould: with modern commentaries by Joan M. The Best of Gould's Mammals: Selections from Mammals of Australia Volumes I, II and III. South Melbourne: Macmillan, 1984 Dornoy, Myriam. Politics in New Caledonia. Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1984 Douglas, Bronwen. In the Event: Indigenous Encountsigns and the Ethnohistory of Voyaging. Ed. Tryon, Darrell. 2009. Oceanic Encounters. 7 January 2013 . Douglas, Charles. "Technique of Making Fish Illustration 26: Stipple Drawings for Scientific Specimens." Environmental Biology of Fishes 18 4 (1987) pp.321–22 Drayton, Richard. Nature's Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the 'Improvement' of the World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000 Ducker, Sophie Charlotte, ed. The Contented Botanist: Letters of W.H. Harvey About Australia and the Pacific. Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 1988 Dunlap, Thomas R. Nature and the English Diaspora: Environment and History in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999 Duyker, Edward. Citizen Labillardière: A Naturalist's Life in Revolution and Exploration (1755–1834). Carlton, Vic.: Miegunyah Press, 2003 ---. "A French Garden in Tasmania: The Legacy of Félix Delahaye (1767– 1829)." Explorations: a journal of French-Australian connections 37 (2004) ---. An Officer of the Blue: Marc-Joseph Marion Dufresne, South Sea Explorer, 1724–1772 Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 1994

243

---. François Péron: An Impetuous Life: Naturalist and Voyager Carlton, Victoria: Miegunah Press, 2006 ---. "In Search of Jean Piron." National Library of Australia News XVI 6 (2006) pp. 7–10 ---. The Discovery of Tasmania: Journal Extracts from the Expeditions of Abel Janszoon Tasman and Marc-Joseph Marion Dufresne 1642–1772. Trans. Duyker, Edward, Herman Duyker and Maryse Duyker. Hobart: St David's Park Publishing, 1992 Elphick, Jonathan. Birds: The Art of Ornithology. London: Scriptum Editions, 2008 Endersby, Jim. ""From Having No Herbarium." Local Knowledge Versus Metropolitan Experience: Joseph Hooker's Australiasian Correspondence with William Colenso and Ronald Gunn." Pacific Science vol.55 no.4 (2001) pp. 343–58 Endersby, Jim. "Classifying Sciences: Systematics and Status in Mid-Victorian Natural History." The Organisation of Knowledge in Victorian Britain. Ed. Daunton, Martin J. Oxford; New York: Published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press, 2005. pp. 61–86 Endersby, Jim. Imperial Nature: Joseph Hooker and the Practices of Victorian Science. London: The University of Chicago Press, 2008 Evans, George William. A Geographical, Historical, and Topographical Description of Van Diemen's Land. London: John Souter, 1822 Feeken, Erwin Herman Josef, and Gerda Elisabeth Emma. Feeken. The Discovery and Exploration of Australia. Melbourne: Thomas Nelson, 1970 Feld, Steven, and Keith H. Basso, eds. Senses of Place. Sante Fe: School of American Research Press, 1996 Fitzmaurice, Andrew. "The Genealogy of Terra Nullius." Australian Historical Studies 129 (20007) pp. 1–15 ---. Images of Science: A History of Scientific Illustration. London: British Library, 1992 Flanagan, Richard. Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish. Sydney: Pan Macmillan Australia, 2001

244

Ford, Brian. "Scientific Illustration in the Eighteenth Century." The Cambridge History of Science 4 (2003) pp. 1–20 Ford, Brian J. Images of Science: A History of Scientific Illustration. London: British Library, 1992 Ford, Caroline. "Nature, Culture and Conservation in France and Her Colonies 1840–1940." Past and Present 183 May (2004) pp. 173–98 Fornasiero, F. J., Peter Monteath, and John West-Sooby. Encountering Terra Australis: The Australian Voyages of Nicolas Baudin and Matthew Flinders. revised edition ed. Kent Town, South Australia: Wakefield Press, 2010 Foss, Paul, ed. Island in the Stream: Myths of Place in Australian Culture. Leichhardt, NSW: Pluto Press, 1988 Foulcault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. Les mots et les choses: une archeologie des sciences humaines. Paris, Gallimard, 1966. London: Tavistock, 1980 Fox, Paul, ed. Drawing on Nature: Images and Specimens of Natural History from the Collection of the Museum of Victoria. Geelong: Geelong Art Gallery, 1992 Freeman, Carol. Paper Tiger: A Visual History of the Thylacine. Human- Animal Studies. Ed. Shapiro, Kenneth. Vol. 9. Leiden: Brill, Hotei Publishing, 2010 Fritze, Ronald H. New Worlds: The Great Voyages of Discovery, 1400–1600. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2002 Frost, Alan John. Voyage of the Endeavour: Captain Cook and the Discovery of the Pacific. St. Leonards, NSW, Australia: Allen & Unwin, 1998 Fuller, Errol. "Voyage of a Painter." Natural History 107 3 (1998) pp. 12–14 Garbutt, Rob. "The Locals: A Critical Survey of the Idea in Recent Australian Scholarly Writing." Australian Folklore 21 (2006) pp. 172–92 ---. "White "Autochthony"." ACRAWSA e-journal 2.1 (2006): pp. 1–16 pp. 28 August 2008 Gaunt, Heather. "Mr Walker's Books, or How the Tasmanian Public Library Founded a Collection and Forgot a Donor." Tasmanian Historical Research Association Papers and Proceedings 54 3 (2007) pp. 107–

245

Gaunt, Heather. "History and Memory in the Tasmanian Public Library: The Curious Case of 'the Hermit in Van Diemen's Land'." History Australia 6 1 (2009) pp. 10.1–10.12 Gibbon, Catherine, ed. On the Edge: Artisitic Visions of a Shrinking Landscape. North York Ontario: Boston Mills Press, 1995 Gilbert, Emily. "Beyond Survival? Wilderness and Canadian National Identity into the Twenty-First Century." British Journal of Canadian Studies 21 1 (2009) pp. 63–88 Giblin, R. W. (Ronald Worthy). Flinders, Baudin and Brown at Encounter Bay. Hobert: Mercury Printing Office, 1929 Gibson, Lisanne. The Uses of Art: Constructing Australian Identities. Uqp Cultural and Media Policy. Ed. Cunningham, Stuart. St Lucia, Qld.: University of Queensland Press in association with the Australian Key Centre for Cultural and Media Policy, Griffith University, 2001 Gibson, Ross. South of the West: Postcolonialism and the Narrative Construction of Australia Bloomington: Indiana University Press, c 1992 Gibson, Ross. "This Prison, This Language: Thomas Watling's 'Letters from an Exile at Botany Bay' (1794)." Island in the Stream: Myths of Place in Australian Culture. Ed. Foss, Paul. Leichhardt, NSW: Pluto Press, 1988 Gleeson, James. Colonial Painters 1788–1880. Australian Painting Studio Series. Ed. Henshaw, John. Dee Why: Landsdowne Press, 1971 Greenshields, Barbie. "Emblems of Belonging: An Inter-Disciplinary Exploration." Museums Australia National Conference. Ed.: Griffiths, Gareth. "Afterword: Apprehending 'Disputed Territories'." Disputed Territories : Land, Culture and Identity in Settler Societies. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, c2003 Grimshaw, Patricia, and Ann Standish. "Making Tasmania Home: Louisa Anne Meredith's Colonizing Prose." Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 28 1 and 2 (2007) pp. 1–17 Groom, Linda. First Fleet Artist: George Raper's Birds and Plants of Australia. Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2009

246

Hamilton, Paula. "The Knife-Edge: Debates About Memory and History." Memory and History in Twentieth-Century Australia. Eds. Darian- Smith, Kate and Paula Hamilton. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1994. pp. 9–32 Hansen, David. John Glover and the Colonial Picturesque. Hobart: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 2003 Harewood, Jocelyn, Tione Chinula, and Vincent Talbot. Vanuatu and New Caledonia. Lonely Planet, 2006 Harrison, Mark. "Science and the British Empire." Isis 96 1 (2005) pp. 56–63 Haskell, Francis. History and Its Images: Art and the Interpretation of the Past. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983 Haynes, Roslynn. "From Habitat to Wilderness: Tasmania's Role in the Politicising of Place." Disputed Territories: Land, Culture and Identity in Settler Societies. Eds. Trigger, David and Gareth Griffiths. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, c2003. pp. 81–108 ---. "Inscribing Culture on the Landscape." Imaging Nature: media, environment and tourism. Ed. Lester, L. and C. Elliss.: University of Tasmania ---. Tasmanian Visions: Landscapes in Writing, Art and Photography. Sandy Bay, Tas: Polymath Press, 2006 Healy, Chris. From the Ruins of Colonialism: History as Social Memory. Studies in Australian History. Eds. Gilbert, Alan, Patricia Grimshaw and Peter Spearritt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997 ---. "Histories and Collecting: Museums, Objects and Memories." Memory and History in Twentieth-Century Australia. Eds. Darian-Smith, Kate and Paula Hamilton. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1994. p. 33–51 Healy, Chris, and Andrea Witcomb, eds. South Pacific Museums: Experiments in Culture. Clayton, Vic.: Monash University Press, 2006 Heathcote, Christopher. "Australian Artists and Environmental Awareness." Art Monthly Australia November 125 (1999) pp. 22–26 Hetherington, Michelle, and Howard Morphy, eds. Discovering Cook's Collections. Canberra: National Museum of Australia Press, 2009 Hewson, Helen. Australia: 300 Years of Botanical Illustration. Collingwood, Vic: CSIRO Publishing, 1999 247

Hoare, Michael Edward. ""All Things Are Queer and Opposite": Scientific Societies in Tasmania in the 1840s." Isis 60 2 (1969) Hodges, Elaine. "Scientific Illustration: A Working Relationship between the Scientist and the Artist." Bioscience 39 2 (1989) pp.104–11 Hodges, Elaine R.S. . The Guild Handbook of Scientific Illustration. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley, c2003 Holmes, Jonathan. "In Black and White: W.C. Piguenit's Monochrome Paintings and the Imaging of the Tasmanian Wilderness in the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia." Kanunnah: Research Journal of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery 3 (2008) pp. 1–12 Holmes, Richard. The Age of Wonder. London: Harper Press, 2009 Horner, Frank Benson. The French Reconnaissance: Baudin in Australia 1801–1803. Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1987 Horowitz, Leah Sophie. "Perceptions of Nature and Responses to Environmental Degradation in New Caledonia." Ethnology 40 3 (2001) pp. 237–50 Hughes-D'Aeth, Tony. Paper Nation: The Story of the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia 1886–1888. Carlton South: Melbourne University Press, 2001 Hunt, Susan, Martin Terry, and Nicholas Thomas. Lure of the Southern Oceans: The Voyages of Dumont D'urville 1826–1840. Sydney: Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, 2002 Hunt, Susan, and Paul Carter. Terre Napoleon: Australia through French Eyes 1800–1804. Sydney: Historic Houses Trust, 1999 Huxley, Joanne K. "Courtier to the Powerful and Zealous Curator for the People: The Contribution of Alexander Morton to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 1884–1907." Kanunnah 2 (2008) pp. 1–34 Imashev, Elizabeth. "The Pictorial Collection of the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts." Tasmanian Insights: Essays in Honour of Geoffrey Thomas Stilwell. Ed. Winter, Gillian. Hobart: State Library of Tasmania, 1992 Jameson, Marian. Bright and Beautiful. Hobart: State Library of Tasmania, 2007

248

Jardine, N., J.A. Secord, and E.C. Spary, eds. Cultures of Natural History. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996 Jasanoff, Maya. "Collectors of Empire: Objects, Conquests and Imperial Self- Fashioning." Past and Present 184 August (2004) pp. 109–35 Jastrzębski, Zbigniew. Scientific Illustration: A Guide for the Beginning Artist. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1985 Jeffreys, Charles. Van Diemen's Land: Geographical and Descriptive Delineations of the Island of Van Diemen's Land. London: J.M. Richardson, 1820 Jennings, Eric T. "Visions and Representations of French Empire." The Journal of Modern History 27 September: (2005) pp. 701–21 Jessup, Lynda. "The Group of Seven and the Tourist Landscape." Journal of Canadian Studies 37 1 (2002) pp. 144–79 Jill, Duchess of Hamilton, and Julia Bruce. The Flower Chain: The Early Discovery of Australian Plants. Sydney: Kangaroo Press, 1998 Johannes, Christa E., and Anthony V. Brown. W. C. Piguenit Retrospective. Hobart: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 1992 Johns, Adrian. "Natural History as Print Culture." Cultures of Natural History. Eds. Jardine, N., J.A. Secord and E.C. Spary. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. pp. 106–26 Johns, Elizabeth (ed). New Worlds from Old. Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 1998 Johnston, Judith. "Louisa Anne Meredith and the Romantic Sublime in Australia." Nineteenth Century Contexts 21 3 (1999) pp. 395–413 Joppien, Rudiger, and Bernard William Smith. The Art of Captain Cook's Voyages. Melbourne: Oxford University Press in association with the Australian Academy of Humanities, 1985 Jordan, Caroline. "Progress Versus the Picturesque: White Women and the Aesthetics of Environmentalism in Colonial Australia 1820–1860." Art History 25 1 (2002) pp. 341–57 Jordan, Caroline. Picturesque Pursuits: Colonial Women Artists & the Amateur Tradition. Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2005

249

Joseph, Leo, and Robert Mc Craken Peck, eds. John Gould's Birds of Australia. Hobart: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 2004 Kastner, Joseph. John James Audubon. First Impressions. Ed. Morton, Robert. New York: Harry N Abrams Inc, 1992 Kaufmann, Eric. "Naturalizing the Nation: The Rise of Naturalistic Nationalism in the United States and Canada." Comparative Studies in Society and History 40 4 (1998) pp. 666–95 Khare, Vadna. "Impasse in New Caledonia." Economic and Political Weekly 22 40 (1987) 1693 Koerner, Lisbeth. "Carl Linnaeus in His Time and Place." Cultures of Natural History. Eds. Jardine, N., J.A. Secord and E.C. Spary. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. pp. 145–62 Kolenberg, Hendrik. "Introduction." The Art Bulletin of Tasmania. Ed. Kolenberg, Hendrik. Hobart: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 1983 Kolenberg, Henrik, Anne Ryan, and Patricia James. 19th Century Australian Watercolours, Drawings and Pastles from the Gallery's Collection. Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2005 Kramer, Jack. Women of Flowers: A Tribute to Victorian Women Illustrators. New York: Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 1996 Kwon, Miwon. One Place after Another. 2002 Lambourne, Maureen. The Art of Bird Illustration: A Visual Tribute to the Lives and Achievements of the Classic Bird Illustrators. Royston: Eagle Editions, 2001 Lehman, Kim. "Australian Museums and the Modern Public: A Marketing Context." The Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society 39 2 (2009) pp. 87–100 Leland, Waldo G. "The Lesueur Collection of American Sketches in the Museum of Natural History at Havre, Seine-Inferieure." The Valley Historical Review 10 1 pp. 53–64 Lennard, Brenden. "William Archer (1820–1874)." The Royal Society of Tasmania Papers and Proceedings 27 3 September (1980) pp. 103–12

250

Levett, John. The Origins of the State Library of Tasmania. Hobart: Tasmanian State Committee of the Australian Library Promotion Council with the assistance of the State Library and Archives Trust, 1988 Longair, Sarah. "Museums and Empire: Natural History, Human Cultures and Colonial Identities." The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 38 4 (2010) pp. 659–61 Loos, Erin. "Evaluating Scientific Illustrations: Basics for Editors." Science Editor 23 4 (2000) pp.124–25 Lowenthal, David. The Past Is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985 Lyons, Martyn. The Totem and the Tricolour: A Short History of New Caledonia since 1774. Kensington, N.S.W.: New South Wales University Press, 1986 Mabberley, David. Ferdinand Bauer: The Nature of Discovery. Illustrations from the Natural Museum. London: The Natural History Museum of London, 1999 Mackay, David. In the Wake of Cook: Exploration, Science & Empire, 1780– 1801. Wellington: Victoria University Press, c,1985 Mackey, Eva. "Death by Landscape." Canadian Woman Studies 20 2 pp. 125– 30 Mackey, Eva. The House of Difference: Cultures, Politics and National Identity in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002 Maleuvre, Didier. Museum Memories: History, Technology, Art. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999 Maxwell, Anne. "Revisionist Histories and Settler Colonial Societies." Southern Review 27 (1994) pp. 383–402 McCalman, Iain. Darwin's Armada: How Four Voyagers to Australasia Won the Battle for Evolution and Changed the World. Camberwell, Victoria: Viking, Penguin Group, 2009 McKitterick, David. "Libraries, Knowledge and Public Identity." The Organisation of Knowledge in Victorian Britain. Ed. Daunton, Martin J. Oxford; New York: Published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press, 2005. pp. 278–311

251

McLean, Ian. "Figuring Nature: Painting the Indigenous Landscape." John Glover and the Colonial Picturesque. Ed. Hansen, David. Hobart: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 2003 McLean, Ian. "Reclaiming Australia: The Port Jackson School and Its Exile." Art and Australia 33 1 (1995) pp. 94–103 ---. White Aborigines: Identity Politics in Australian Art Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998 McTavish, Lianne. "Learning to See in New Brunswick." The Canadian Historical Review 87.4 (2006) pp. 553–81 Malpas, J. E. Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999 Manning, Erin. Ephemeral Territories: Representing Nation, Home, and Identity in Canada Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003 Markham, J.W. and A.L. Duda eds. French Voyages of Exploration and Science in the Age of Enlightenment: An Ocean of Discovery Throughout the Pacific Ocean The Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference of IAMSLIC. 2005. Marshall, A.J. Darwin and Huxley in Australia. Sydney: Hodder and Stoughton Ltd., 1970 Mead, Isabella. "William Buelow Gould." Papers and Proceedings of The Royal Society of Tasmania 93 (1958) pp. 81–89 Mellen, Peter. The Group of Seven. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1970 Meredith, David, and Deborah Oxley. "Contracting Convicts: The Convict Labour Market in Van Diemen's Land 1840–1857." Australian Economic History Review 45 1 (2005) pp. 45–72 Merle, Isabelle. "The Foundation of Voh 1892–1895." The Journal of Pacific History 26 2 (1991) pp. 234–44 Message, Kylie. New Museums and the Making of Culture. Oxford: Berg, 2006 Micco, Helen Mary. King Island and the Sealing Trade 1802. Canberra: Roebuck Society, 1971 Mills, Richard Charles. The Colonization of Australia, 1829–42: The Wakefield Experiment in Empire Building Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1974 252

Minihan, Janet. The Nationalization of Culture: The Development of State Subsidies to the Arts in Great Britain. New York: New York University Press, 1977 Mitchell, T C. Captain Cook and the South Pacific. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1979 Mittchel, W. J. T., ed. Landscape and Power. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002 Modiano, Raimonda. "The Legacy of the Picturesque: Landscape, Property and the Ruin." The Politics of the Picturesque. Eds. Copley, Stephen and Peter Garside. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994 Moore, Willaim. The Story of Australian Art: Vol 1. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1934 Moorehead, Alan. The Fatal Impact: The Invasion of the South Pacific 1767– 1840. Sydney: Mead & Beckett Publishing, 1987 Moran, Anthony. "As Australia Decolonizes: Indigenizing Settler Nationalism and the Challenges of Settler/Indigenous Relations." Ethnic and Racial Studies 25 6 (2002) pp. 1013–42 Nair, Savithri Preetha. "Science and the Politics of Colonial Collecting: The Case of Indian Meteorites, 1856–70." British Journal for the History of Science 39 March (2006) pp. 97–119 Nash, Catherine. "Setting Roots in Motion: Genealogy, Geography and Identity." Disputed Territories: Land, Culture and Identity in Settler Societies. Eds. Trigger, David and Gareth Griffiths. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, c2003. pp. 29–52 Neville, Richard. A Rage for Curiosity: Visualising Australia 1788-1830. Sydney: State Library of New South Wales Press, 1997 Norst, Marlene J. Ferdinand Bauer: The Australian Natural History Drawings. Art in Natural History. London: British Museum (Natural History), 1989 Norton, Leonie. Women of Flowers: Botanical Art in Australia from the 180s to the 1960s. Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2009 Ogden, Julie. Charles Darwin: An Australian Selection. Canberra: National Museum of Australia Press, 2008

253

Olsen, Penny. Feather and Brush: Three Centuries of Australian Bird Art. Collingwood: CSIRO Publishing, c2001 Orchard, A. E. "A History of Systematic Botany in Australia, in Flora of Australia Vol.1, 2nd Ed.". 1999. Australian National Botanic Gardens. 20 October 2011. Outram, Dorinda. "New Spaces in Natural History." Cultures of Natural History. Eds. Jardine, N., J.A. Secord and E.C. Spary. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. pp. 249–65 Owen, Janet. "Collecting Artefacts, Acquiring Empire." Journal of the History of Collections 18 1 (2006) pp. 9–25 Pearce, Susan. "A New Way of Looking at Old Things." Museum International 51 2 (1999) pp. 12–17 Pearson, David. "Theorizing Citizenship in British Settler Societies." Ethnic and Racial Studies 25 6 (2002) pp. 989–1012 Petrow, Stefan. "After Arthur: Policing in Van Diemen's Land 1827–46." Policing the Lucky Country. Eds. Enders, M. and B. Dupont. Sydney: Hawkins Press, 2001. pp. 176–98 Phillips, Ruth B. "Re-Placing Objects: Historical Practices for the Second Museum Age." The Canadian Historical Review 86 1 March (2005) pp. 83–110 Pickstone, John. "Science in Nineteenth Century England: Plural Configuration and Singular Politics." The Organisation of Knowledge in Victorian Britain. Ed. Daunton, Martin J. Oxford; New York: Published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press, 2005. pp. 29–60 Pinault, Madeleine. The Painter as Naturalist: From Dürer to Redouté. Paris: Flammarion, 1991 Plomley, N.J.B. The Baudin Expedition and the Tasmanian Aborigines, 1802. Hobart, Tasmania: Blubber Head Press, 1983 Porter, Charlotte. "The History of Scientific Illustration." Journal of the History of Biology 28 (1995) 545–50 Potts, Alex. "Natural Order and the Call of the Wild: The Politics of Animal Picturing." Oxford Art Journal 13.1 (1990): 12–33 pp. jstor. 28 August 2008 . 254

Pyenson, Lewis, and Susan Sheets-Pyenson. Servants of Nature: A History of Scientific Institutions, Enterprises, and Sensibilities. New York: W.W.Norton, 1999 Radford, Ron, and Jane Hylton. Australian Colonial Art: 1800–1900. Adelaide: Art Gallery Board of South Australia, 1995 Reeves, Henry M., François-Marc Gagon, and C. Stuart Houston. ""Codex Canadiensis", an Early Illustrated Manuscript of Canadian Natural History." Archives of Natural History 31 (1) (2004) pp. 150–66 Reynolds, Henry. "Australian Nationalism: Tasmanian Patriotism." New Zealand Journal of History 5–6 (1982) pp.18–29 Robin, Libby. "Collections and the Nation: Science, History and the National Museum of Australia." Historical Record of Australian Science 14 3 (2003) pp. 252–69 Rice, Tony. Voyages of Discovery. Crows Nest, New South Wales: Allen and Unwin, 2008 Robson, John. Captain Cook's World: Maps of the Life and Voyages of James Cook R.N. Auckland: Random House New Zealand, 2000 ---. "The Captain Cook Encyclopaedia." Ed. Robson, John. Auckland: Random Press New Zealand, 2004 Robson, Lloyd, and Michael Banks. A Short History of Tasmania. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1997 Sankey, Patrick Filmer. "Introduction." Flowers of Tasmania: Botanical Drawings of Margaret Stones and William Buelow Gould. Launceston: Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, 2007 Saunders, Gill. Picturing Plants: An Analytical History of Botanical Illustration. Berkeley: University of California Press in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1995 Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism. London: Chatto and Windus, 1993 Schama, Simon. Landscape and Memory. London: Fontana Press, 1996 Secord, James A. "The Crisis of Nature." Cultures of Natural History. Eds. Jardine, N., J.A. Secord and E.C. Spary. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. pp. 447–59 Shadbolt, Doris. Images for a Canadian Heritage. Vancouver: The Vancouver Art Gallery Association, 1966 255

Sharp, Nonie. "The Artistic and the Literary Imagination in Australia and Beyond: Finding Places of the Heart among the Gum Trees." Colloquy 12 (2006) pp. 154–70 Sherman, Daniel J, and Irit Rogoff, eds. Museum Culture: Histories, Discourses, Spectacles. London: Routledge, 1994 Smith, Bernard William, ed. Documents on Art and Taste in Australia: The Colonial Period 1770–1914. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1975 ---. European Vision and the South Pacific. 2nd ed ed. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1989 ---. Imagining the Pacific: In the Wake of the Cook Voyages. Carlton, Vic: Melbourne University Press at the Miegunyah Press, 1992 Smith, Bernard William, and Alwyne Wheeler, eds. The Art of the First Fleet, & Other Early Australian Drawings. Melbourne: Oxford University Press in association with the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the British Museum (Natural History), 1988 Smith, Charles Saumarez. "Museums, Artefacts, and Meanings." The New Museology. Ed. Vergo, Peter. London: Reaktion Books, 1989. pp. 6–21 Smith, Claire. "Decolonising the Museum: The National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, Dc." ANTIQUITY 79 304 (2005) pp. 424–39 Smith, Ure. Picturesque Atlas of Australasia: Facsimile Ed. Cover Title: Australia: The First Hundred Years, Being a Fascimilie of Volumes I & Ii of the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia, 1888. Originally Published in 3 V.: Sydney, Picturesque Atlas Publishing Co., 1886–88. Sydney, 1974 Sparks, Cameron. William Buelow Gould 1801–1853. Sydney: Clune Galleries, 1968 Staples, Max. "Tasmania as Little England and the Social Construction of Landscape." Rural Society 13 3 (2003) pp. 312–29 Stephens, Matthew. "'a Scientific Library of Some Value': An Early History of the Australian Museum Library. Paper In: Unfinished Business: Papers from the Forum on Australian Library History Held at the State Library

256

of Nsw, Sydney, 27–29 September 2007. Jones, David J. (Ed.)." Australian Library Journal 56 3–4 (2007) pp. 302–11 Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Collection: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. Ed. Mordaunt, Caroline. Hobart: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 2007 Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Fierce or Friendly. Hobart: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, 2008 Thomas, Sarah. The Encounter, 1802: Art of the Flinders and Baudin Voyages. Adelaide: Art Gallery of South Australia, 2002 Thomson, Keith Stewart. Treasures on Earth: Museums, Collections and Paradoxes. London: Faber and Faber, 2002 Tiley, Robert. Australian Navigators: Picking up Shells and Catching Butterflies in an Age of Revolution. East Roseville, N.S.W.: Kangaroo Press, 2002 Timms, Peter. Flowers of Tasmania: Botanical Drawings of Margaret Stones and William Buelow Gould. Launceston: Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, 2007 Tissander, Marianne. "Museums of New Caledonia: The Old, the New and the Balance " South Pacific Museums: Experiments in Culture. Eds. Healy, Chris and Andrea Witcomb. Clayton, Vic: Monash University Press, 2006 Toth, Stephen A. "Colonisation or Incarceration?" The Journal of Pacific History 34 1 (1999) pp. 59–74 Tranter, Bruce, and Jed Donoghue. "Colonial and Post-Colonial Aspects of Australian Identity." The British Journal of Sociology 58 2 (2007) pp. 165–83 Treasures of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery. Launceston, Tasmania: Foot & Playsted, c2006 Trigger, David, and Jane Mulcock. "Forests as Spiritually Significant Places: Nature, Culture and 'Belonging' in Australia." The Australian Journal of Anthropology 16 3 (2005) pp. 306–20 Trigger, David, and Gareth Griffiths, eds. Disputed Territories: Land, Culture and Identity in Settler Societies. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, c2003 257

Trustees of the British Museum (Natural History), Handbook of Instructions for Collectors. Fourth ed. London, 1921 Tuan, Yi-Fu. Man and Nature. Association of American Geographers. Commission on College Geography. Resource Paper ; No. 10. Washington: Association of American Geographers, Commission on College Geography, 1971 ---. "Thought and Landscape: The Eye and the Mind's Eye." The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes: Geographical Essays. Ed. D.W., Meinig. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. pp. 89–101 ---. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press, 1977 Vanclay, Frank, Matthew Higgins, and Adam Blackshaw, eds. Making /Sense of Place: Exploring Concepts and Expressions of Place through Different Senses and Lenses. Canberra: National Museum of Australia, 2008 Veracini, Lorenzo. "Historylessness: Australia as a Settler Colonial Collective." Postcolonial Studies 10 3 (2007) pp. 271–85 Vergo, Peter, ed. The New Museology. London: Reaktion Books, 1989 Wallace, Colin. The Lost Australia of François Péron. London: Nottingham Court Press, 1984 Watts, Peter, Jo Anne Pomfrett, and David Mabberley. An Exquisite Eye: The Australian Flora & Fauna Drawings 1801–1820 of Ferdinand Bauer. Glebe, New South Wales: Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, c1997 Whitaker, Katie. "The Culture of Curiosity." Cultures of Natural History. Eds. Jardine, N., J.A. Secord and E.C. Spary. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. pp. 75–90 White, Richard. Inventing Australia: Images and Indentity, 1688–1980. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1981 Whitfeld, Ernest. History of the Launceston Mechanics’ Institute and Public Library (Inc). Williamson, Russell. "Capturing Flora: 300 Years of Australian Botanical Art." The Age 15 September 2012

258

Winter, Gillian, ed. Tasmanian Insights: Essays in Honour of Geoffrey Thomas Stilwell. Hobart: State Library of Tasmania, 1992 Withey, Lynne. Voyages of Discovery: Captain Cook and the Exploration of the Pacific London: Hutchinson, 1988 Wood, Christopher S. Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape. London: Reaktion Books Ltd., 1993 Wood, Phyllis, and Patrick. McDonnell. Scientific Illustration: A Guide to Biological, Zoological, and Medical Rendering Techniques, Design, Printing, and Display. 2nd. ed. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, c1994 Woolliscroft, Pam. "Flora Ceramica." Curtis Botanical Magazine (2002) pp. 183–213 Yoon, Carol Kaesuk. Naming Nature: The Clash between Instinct and Science. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2010

Theses Burgess, Erica Claire. "A Conservation Study of the Paintings of William Buelow Gould (1801–1853)." 1989 Gore, James Michael. "Representations of History and Nation in Museums in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand—the National Museum of Australia and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa." Doctor of Philosophy. University of Melbourne, 2002 Hansen, Anita. "The Illustrations and Work of William Archer." Master of Fine Art. University of Tasmania, 2007 Ingleton, John, Littoal: An Investigation into the Potentialities Inherent in Time and Place through Images and Text Richardson, Joanna. "An Annotated Edition of the Journals of Mary Morton Allport." University of Tasmania, 2006

259